Storms came into the Northern Alabama area and of course I was working. I missed the best ones, but I did go chase during my lunch. I got a few lightning shots and chased a shelf. The shelf was gorgeous, but it was a weak shelf with little lightning, no wind, and only moderate rain. I threw together a quick video of the shelf chase:
I also threw together a GIF of one of the lightning strikes I caught near my house before I chased the shelf:
On April 28th, 2014, storms came through north Alabama and dropped a few tornadoes. We were waiting on the tornado coming into Hazel Green. Our radar went down and we were going on visual only. Visually, we noticed the line was coming in a bit further south than our last radar indication and quickly moved south. We only made it a few blocks before the tornado was on top of us. Luckily, we were on the south wall and able to position the car so that any debris would hit the back of the vehicle and not our side. Unfortunately, the video from inside the tornado does not exist. I thought that in our scramble to get in the car and get to a safe area, we knocked the power cable out of the dashcam, but upon reviewing the video, it is clear that I knocked the power cable out when I was re-positioning the dashcam to look forward again. I was excited about having video from inside the tornado only to be greatly disappointed when I got home and realized my mistake. The video stopped didn’t start back up again until after Fire & Rescue were on scene for the damaged buildings.
The building we were parked in front of originally had been destroyed. Had we remained where we were at, bricks and chairs and other debris would have been thrown into our car and we would have been at clearly what was the worst winds of the tornado. The tornado took down trees and did minor damage to the houses we were in front of, destroyed the building we were initially in front of and continued to do damage across the northern Hazel Green area and into Tennessee.
I finally got around to editing the video from the day, so here it is:
Here are some pics from the chase (you can click on the smaller image to see the full-size image):
Heading north into New Market, AL to chase the oncoming system.
Gorgeous!
Close call!
Stunning!
This is the building we were parked in front of before we realized we were too far north:
We continued to drive south and took a few more shots of lightning:
Continuing the catching up series. Click on any photo to see the full size image.
I went out chasing on February 20th only expecting to catch lightning. The cell I chose as the most promising for lightning ended up getting a tornado warning on it about five miles from where I was at. Since it was dark, I called it a night. Chasing in Alabama is dangerous enough… chasing in the dark in Alabama? No thanks!
20140220 Storms:
Continuing the catching up series. Click on any photo to see the full size image.
My favorite lightning shot of all time comes from this series. It’s the one I use for my banner on Twitter, Facebook, etc. This storm brought with it tons of green lightning, including a green lightning display that lasted for more than 10 minutes. It was absolutely gorgeous!
20130417 Lightning:
Blair Scott: Synthentral 