06.11.22
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The Final Chase 6/9

Thursday was the last day of stormchasing for this trip with forecasts for Friday not looking promising. It’s crazy how quickly 10 days fly by.

We’ve been extremely fortunate this trip with storms to chase on all but 1 day, if we had 4-5 days with chaseable weather it would have been great so this really was excellent!

We started Thursday in Burlington, CO where we’d spent our only non chase day of the trip on Wednesday. We were well positioned for storms with just a short initial set up drive to Colby, KS where we had some more time on our hands. Finding things to do can be challenging in this part of Kansas.

The world’s largest easel- From now on I only wish to appreciate Art that’s displayed on an 80ft easel- definitely the way Van Gogh intended his work to be appreciated.
The 5% risk area in Western KS & NE we had targeted for the day.

After waiting until early afternoon our first potential target popped up on radar to our North so we headed into Southern NE to get a look.

The view of our first target for the day
Our storm on radar a we watched it develop
Our first target at its most developed before it started to fall apart.

In addition to our target storms, another cell began to develop 100 miles to our north, unfortunately a bit too far for us to realistically make it. I did however get a time-lapse of the storm to the north developing over the course of 30 minutes.

One of the most satisfying things to see is the way an updraft seemingly forms from nothing and develops into something intense over a very short amount of time.

The storm to our North.

Unfortunately our target storm started to peter out early so we decided to target a new storm to our South. The time-lapse below shows our drive into our 2nd target for the day.

This was the scariest moment of the drive! The deer just bolted out in front of us!
The view from under our storm
Our storm on radar as we were under it.
One of my favorite lightning shots of the trip, and the thunder was not far behind!

After enjoying a spectacular lighting show it was time to reposition on our storm to keep up with it. With only small hail we were able to follow the storm closely as it rolled South East. The video below is 11 minutes of driving into the lightning! My favorite bit of stormchasing!

One of many lightning bolts striking around us as we drove through the storm

After relocating we had more awesome lighting, although I didn’t mange to get many good shots from this location.

There are few things more visceral than standing under a lightning storm like this. Brilliant!
The view from under the storm after relocating
Sunset on our last chase of the year

Back on the road for some night time lightning before calling it a day.

The next 2 photos are the same lightning bolt over the course of a second.

Electric fingers reach down from the storm
It connects with the ground and night becomes day for a momment
And the final view of the lightning bolt lingers
The darkness adds to the mystical quality of the storm
Farewell storm!

Thursdays chase was a high note to end what had been a fantastic trip, reconnecting with some great friends and getting to know new ones, while soaking in the raw beauty that is mother nature.

Stay tuned for one more post with my highlights from this year’s trip!

One thought on “The Final Chase 6/9”

  1. Excellent lightning photos. I have really enjoyed your blogs Sean, so a big thanks for posting

    Reply

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