06/29/12 De Kalb, IL shelf/lightning

IT RAINED!!!!!! I was starting to wonder whether or not we will ever see rain again around here.  This morning I had to wake up early and take observations at the co-op station here in De Kalb and realized I felt sick.  So, I decided to stay home and sleep in a bit after taking my observations.  After a few hours, I woke up and noticed that it was a bit dark outside and glanced at the radar.  Well,  I saw that we had a nice shelf starting to form west of town.  I grabbed my camera and took off out the door.  I raced a few miles west to get into some clearing (I don't like buildings in my photos) and had just enough time to grab a few shots.  I wanted to time lapse it but since I got a late start I didn't even have time to set up the tripod.  Once I saw the rain coming I decided to race back east in hopes of getting ahead of it.  Alas, very quickly realized it was surging out and my efforts were futile.  Either way, I feel better!  Cooler temps, rain, and an amazing looking shelf turns out to be pretty good medicine.

Well, after a few weeks without rain we got hit twice today.  The second time around was a just a little scraping though.  I decided to head south of town and try to get on the edge of a mini-mcs, which quickly broke up into a multi-cell cluster, in hopes of grabbing some lightning.  I was out there for about 20 minutes or so but once a bright CG flash hit about 500 feet from me I called it quits (realized life was more important).  Below are the photos I caught using my wide-angle lens.  The flashes were were much closer than they appear.  

06/16/12 De Kalb, IL Outflow

Well, I haven't posted anything for a while because we have been in a bit of a drought.  As I traveled down state and back to Evansville, IN for a buddies' wedding I noticed that the crops aren't doing much better down their either.  The farmers are starting to get a bit worried because this spring has been quite abnormal temperature, wind, sunshine, and precipitation wise.  Either way, today looked like a good chance for some relief with a slight chance of some rain and possibly an MCS that could produce some nice photogenic shelf-clouds.... Well, as the the system neared I was quite pessimistic about everything thinking it looked like garbage and unorganized crap (which it was -- below--).  But, since I forgot what rain and storms looked like I decided to head to the south of town to try and shoot down the barrel of the outflow from the system.

I was hoping for a nice shelf but it just didn't get its act together.  I decided to stay after dark and try and catch a few lightning shots but this far north there wasn't much lightning to speak of.  The only chance I had was a nice crawler that I missed because I was in between shots and the camera was processing..... Those are the breaks.  Lightning hates me.  However, as I write this right now, we are getting some much needed rain and that is good.  Below are a few shots I grabbed from this evening.  They are a bit grainy (which I hate), but I had to digitally bring up the exposure more than I like because it was a bit darker than I anticipated.  Enjoy.