Went storm chasing on Tuesday

I had a spur of the moment chase yesterday in the panhandle of Nebraska and points east. My goal was to try to get some good squall line outflow shots; unfortunately, I never came across the "gaping maw of doom" arcus clouds that I was looking for (at least they never showed up in the line segments that I was chasing), but it was a fun chase nonetheless. I got to play in the hail a bit (lots of pea sized hail with these squalls -- it covered the road on multiple occasions), got to weave in and out of the precipitation areas of the squalls, and got to dodge tumbleweeds. Actually, on that note -- wow. A good 35mph wind from the south on the flatlands of western Nebraska is quite a sight to see. It's like driving through sideways tumbleweed-rain.

There was one exciting point in the chase when I had hopes that I might get one of those streched-vorticity landspouts you see sometimes on squall lines. It happened as I crossed the boundary between the inflow (the air being sucked into the storm) and the outflow (the cool air being blown out of a storm) while under the roiling outflow clouds -- it went from a sustained ~40mph outflow wind from the north to a sustained ~40mph wind from the south (still cold, though) in about half a kilometer. I wish I had a vidcam running; it looked amazing l coming over the crest of the hill and seeing a train of tumbleweeds crossing from north to south in the foreground with a dust storm blowing from south to north only a half mile to the east. And it was fun having the car suddenly jerk to the left as I exited the outflow.

The real meat of the storm season is nearly upon us; between Vortex 2 and my own chasing, I'm really hoping that this is a good year for storm photography.

 

WOW! #1 & #2 are amazing. What settings for #1 ? I always wonder if lightning shots are fluke or not...

 

Very nice. Hopefully I can manage some storm shots this year too. What setup were you shooting with here?

 

#1 has some amazing timing. Was that by accident or did you wait tell you saw some lighting?

 

Ryan
Very cool shots. I love big thunder and big lightning storms. In the northeast, we do not have a lot of open vistas as in your photos, but we do get some heavy duty thunder/lightning storms. It seems a lot of them come in the evening and at dark.

Keep up the good chase, and I look forward to more storm shots.

 

Oh man, those are fantastic, looooove the rain in the last one. Good job mate.

 

For everyone asking about #1 it's probably a narrow aperture and a long exposure. Maybe even with a ND filter. See how everything is in focus? Can't view exif on this backup pc.. so I'm just guessing.

I'm with everyone on #1 and #2 - breathtaking - especially 2. Just wanted to say I liked them and thanks for sharing.

 

great images. Did you use a gnd?

 

great shots

 

Great shots.

X2 on letting us know what camera/lens/filters you used.

 

WOW!.... Those clouds are AMAZING! They look so low to the ground... VERY nice shots~

 

EXIF of #1:
Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 50D
Lens: EF-S10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
Image Date: 2010-04-13 19:32:22 +0000
Focal Length: 10mm
Focus Distance: Infinite
Aperture: f/8.0
Exposure Time: 1.600 s
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: -0.33 EV
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: No
Color Space: sRGB
Photographer: Ryan McGinnis
Copyright: Copyright Ryan McGinnis 2010