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6-4-07
Well, if any chaser was to view this page they'd just laugh at me, especially if they were from the plains. But, given the year we've had this year, I'm scratching and clawing for anything. So, I noticed a cell fire in northeast Iowa and sweeping down our way, but it was still quite a ways away. By the time it had reached the Iowa City area, it eventually went severe warned and was dropping all kinds of lightning according to the strike chart. All I wanted was lightning, but I suppose hail would have been awesome! Well, just like almost EVERY storm that nears our area, it quickly dissipated into a light green blob and that was it. All I could do was laugh. I was almost ready to crash when I saw another cell fire a little after midnight. It looked to be riding an outflow boundary of a dying cell to its northeast, near Galena. It actually looked pretty intense for a little bit on radar. I couldn't tell how electric it was considering my chart decides to refresh every hour. So I set down to the docks once again. It was actually VERY inactive as far as lightning goes. But, unlike my other outings this year, I actually got very lucky. I literally only saw about 4 bolts the entire time, and I captured three of them (one being a crawler). It actually was pretty interesting for a little bit. It was dead calm as I saw a few very dim flashes over the treeline, then all of a sudden the wind picked up like a switch was flipped. The leading edge had some pretty interesting characteristics. Although it was absolutely nothing, it was at least something to head out and shoot. It was nice to actually take some long exposures again. Here was the lead edge.
A little later a lowering appeared, although not the least bit threatening. It's the one on the left hand side.
A few minutes later. The blue was a distant flash behind the treeline. I didn't see a bolt with it. I was actually very surprised it even showed up as well as it did since it was so dim. While I had the camera slapped on the window mount, the wind was really rocking my truck which made the picture a little out of focus.
Then, a little later I decided to point the camera to the right just for the laughs. I had literally not seen one bolt yet, just a couple flashes. As soon as I pointed it to the right, sure enough I saw the first bolt. But, the only problem was I had the aperture set at f/4 at ISO 200 because I wanted to pick up the light in the clouds more. Well, this was one extremely bright flash and I pretty much knew it was going to be blown out. So, immediately after the bolt I covered up the lens with my hand to prevent any more light from entering. I was really hoping it wouldn't screw up the shot. It was still very blown out, but felt it didn't turn out too bad. If I would have left the lens uncovered, the entire scene probably would have been way too washed out.
So after that flash, I figured I would have time to change my camera settings. I set the aperture to f/5.6 and downed the ISO to 100. Right after I did this and set back up, another bolt! I couldn't believe my luck. Usually it's the other way around.
I only had time to take a few more after this before the rain started to fall. Even though it was starting to sprinkle, I upped the ISO to 800, set the aperture to f/4 and pointed further to the north to try and capture more detail in the clouds coming in straight overhead. Again, as soon as I did this, this crawler spread out into the frame.
Then, as you can see, the rain hit. It rained very hard actually, for about 10 minutes. During the rain, I literally did not see one more flash or bolt.
So, like I said, this isn't much but at least I had more lightning to shoot. It's been a while. Our area is pretty boring this year with the exception of the Muscatine tornado.