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8-7-07
Storms initiated in early evening toward the southwest corner of Iowa and quickly went severe. Of course they didn't STAY severe by the time they reached us, with the exception of a brief stint where a yellow box was put up in Henry County then quickly taken down. I knew lightning was on the way, but WOW, I wasn't expecting what I got. This was by FAR the most electric storm I have seen around here. It looked like daylight the entire time. I've never seen so many cg's in a one minute span either.
I first ventured down to the docks when the storms were still out east of Iowa City. I figured I'd just sit there and wait since I didn't have anything else to do anyway. Much to my surprise, I could already see the flashes and an occasional anvil crawler already.
Although not much, I was glad I was already seeing some action. This was taken from the window mount and was fortunate enough to grab it. This crawler actually covered some sky but it was way off to the left of the frame. I set up on the dock shortly after and take shot after shot with nothing else. Curious, I checked to see how the battery was doing and it was on its last leg. I sort of cursed myself for not charging it earlier in the night. I pack up, run home and grab the car charger and set back out. By this time I could finally see the first cg's. This was when I was really surprised by how much the activity picked up. This is looking southwest at the river bend in Rapids City.
As this was happening, I saw a VERY bright green power flash that lasted for a good 5-6 seconds. I've never seen so many different power flashes in one little storm. I probably saw 6 or 7 the hour I was out. Power company employees were probably cursing this storm off. Also, this was the original color of the sky. There was absolutely zero post-processing done to the colors in all of these river shots. It was either very bright blue or this purplish hue. Very cool. This shot below was the ONLY shot I had all night long with only one bolt. After the first cg was captured, not a shot went by where I didn't capture at least two or three. Oh yeah, and if you look close enough you can see a white a red streak in the water. That was a little boat moving full speed (which was about 10 mph moving upstream). I'm not sure why he waited so long to head in, but if I saw lightning that constant and that close the entire time, I would have already been home.
Backed out a little more. The wind sort of picked up here and is evident by the blur of the boat. In the pics above it is pretty still.
Now backed all the way out to 17mm.
Zoomed back in, 40mm. I actually forgot to re-focus as I did this. Normally there isn't that much of a difference between focus from 17-40 (not that I'VE noticed, anyway), but this was seemed a bit soft. Maybe the wind rattled the tripod a bit too, I don't know.
These were starting to get very cool now. Notice them starting to show through the higher clouds. I couldn't have asked for a better setting. The only question was when the rain would hit. It was imminent it was going to happen, I was just hoping it would have held off a little longer than it did.
The rains came shortly after the pic above and it was time to move out. But, I didn't want to be done. I captured all of those above in about 10-12 minutes. I still can't get over how many bolts this storm was throwing out. I had an idea in my head for quite some time now of shooting some lightning with I-88 in the foreground. The only difference in my thinking was facing the other way, westbound. During this shot, most of the action was to the southeast so I tried to nab as much as the eastbound lane as I could.
Unfortunately, I could only pull off one freaking shot since three cars decided to come up behind me on this backroad that I think I've only seen three cars in my LIFETIME. Oh well. I fire the truck back up and continue on further down the road. Back to my usual lightning and "anything else" spot. I wish there were more places like this around here to shoot from.
I left this shot alone (crooked horizon) for a reason. Usually when a car passes with long exposures, the only thing you see is the headlights and/or tail lights streaking by since the rest of the car is not bright enough or lit up so the sensor can pick it up. In this one, however, you can see several frames with the car in it. That just goes to show how often and bright these were occurring.
Here is a 100% crop. Every time you see that car, it's being lit up enough by the lightning flashes for the sensor to pick it up. This car was also traveling a good 30mph on this road. It was like this the entire time.
I sit here for maybe 15 more minutes with some of the same old shots. As the storm pulled away, all the blues and purples started fading to this ordinary whitish/gray tint. I'm not exactly sure why this happened, but I still grabbed some nice ones.
100% crop from the above image.
Shortly after the above, the rain hit pretty hard. There was no way I was risking any damage to my equipment by leaving it out in the downpour. Usually if it's light to moderate rain, I'll find a way around it, but this time it was just a little too much. Besides, all I could see were flashes now anyway through the rain shafts. Oh well. I walked away from tonight feeling pretty good. Even though the outing wasn't very long, I still went home with quite a few shots. In my own opinion, I think this was one of my best outings ever.