Archived Weather Storm Photography Finding Some Beauties

July 28, 2009 – I love coming across old weather and storm photography that I seem to forget about, or misplace on a drive. The last few days I have been cleaning some Hard-drives and memory sticks. I have found some images that I have completely forgot about and wanted to share a few of them in this post. Most of these weather pictures are either from South Florida or chasing Supercells in Tornado Alley.

Gulf Stream Thunderstorm Complex – South Florida

Organized thunderstorm complex offshore Broward County, Florida back in Spring of 2008. The system was associated with a cold front boundary tracking over the warmer waters of the Gulf stream. I remember shooting a beautiful time-lapse that afternoon of the same scene.

Smoke Plume with Sun Rays – South Florida

During the wildfires of 2007, I captured this scene of a smoke plume backlit with sun rays on a late Spring afternoon in the Northern Everglades. Florida was experiencing a significant drought that year, with widespread wildfires. I filmed more wildfires that season than storms.

Elevated Thunderstorm Downburst Winds – South Florida

This was shot over the Sugarcane fields of west-central Palm Beach County, Florida. It’s a elevated thunderstorm that produced a dry downburst over the young sugarcane. There were at times, several small Gustnado vortices that developed on the front end of this plume of dust. Pretty cool!

Beautiful Eastern Colorado Supercell Thunderstorm

During my Spring 2005 Storm Chase expedition in Tornado Alley, we chased this beautiful Supercell that just developed on the High Plains of eastern Colorado. This storm went on to become a massive classic Supercell thunderstorm as it neared the Colorado / Kansas border. A great day!

Double Rainbow with Hail Falling – Kansas

This angle of the storm was our group approaching a Kansas Supercell Thunderstorm on the backside. The hail shaft wrapped around the backside of the storm, producing a cool double rainbow as hail stones fell across the road. We went on to chase this storm for another 4 hours into the dark.

Large Golf Ball Size Hail Stones – 2004

I can’t remember if this was taken in the Texas Panhandle or Southeastern Colorado. It was just in some of my 2004 files. I do know it’s my hand holding semi-melted large golf ball size hailstones. I do remember dealing with several large hail episodes that chase season and having vehicle hail damage.

More Picture Likely to Come -

I have so many more pictures that I’d like to share, but you can only post so many at a time. I have two more drives to clean through the next week, and I’m sure I’m going to find even more interesting weather pictures, especially some hurricane 2004-2005 scenes from Katrina and Frances, Jeanne, Rita and Wilma.

Port Orange Florida Tornadic Storm Puts On Great Lightning

July 26, 2009 – Typical South Florida after dark lightning storms normally seen during mid-summer, have been very active this July, as seen in the picture below. Afternoon and evening storms have been lasting well into the late evening hours, putting on lightning displays well worth staying for and watching.

Recently on July 24, 2009 – The same organized thunderstorm complex that produced the Port Orange, Florida weak EF-0 tornado event in Volusia County, and the water spout that moved onshore that became a weak tornado in Ormond Beach, FL, put on also a outstanding lightning display. Fellow Storm Chaser Chris Kridler from the Space Coast, was out and about that evening along the coast with her camera ready.

As the storm slowly propagated southward down the east coast sea breeze boundary, it continued to maintain it’s strength, producing a fantastic lightning show over the Space Coast of east central Florida. Chris Kridler captured some amazing lightning photography scenes that night.

The evening began with a farewell to my husband’s brother – a memorial at Lone Cabbage Fish Camp in Cocoa, Florida. Then the skies opened. I had my camera, so when the gathering was over, I sought out the storm. This was one of the best nights I’ve seen for lightning in a long time here

You can view her beautiful display of lightning pictures in her gallery for July 24, 2009. There are 39 photographs in the gallery of Florida’s well known summertime lightning shows. The Florida wet season has been fairly impressive this year, with many upper-level disturbances helping to enhance storms. We’ll see if it continues as we get ready to move into August next week.

Peaceful Sky Scenes Close Out A Relaxing Summer Week

July 24, 2009 – The end of the week closed out with some peaceful cloud scenes along my trails. I returned to the lake after a week in Miami, with hazy skies from the Sahara dust that traveled across the Atlantic. I was greeted mid-week with deep blue Florida skies once again, with relaxing cumulus clouds painting summer the sky.

The afternoon thunderstorms kept their distance from me this week, and roamed mostly over Central Florida and the Southern Florida Everglades region. There was a few towering cumulus scenes where sea breeze boundaries came together, but warmer and drier air aloft kept these from becoming typical July lightning storms within my location. No Storm Chasing for me the last 8 days, but I have spent time monitoring the tropics and severe storms across the United States. A very mellow week of take it easy.

Lazy Slow Summer Mornings

I started each morning with a delicious ice coffee, my daily rounds of blogs and news, and enjoying reading and conversing with fellow Weather enthusiasts, Filmmakers, Photographers, Videographers, and Floridians on Twitter.

Enjoyed Talking Storm Chasing and Hurricanes

I also had fun as a returned guest on the Live Barometer Bob Show last night, along with fellow friend and Veteran Storm Chaser Jim Leonard. You can listen to the Podcast of the show here.

Dinner and A Movie At Home

Tonight Kersten and I plan to relax, rent a movie, and stay home grilling some burgers while enjoying the South Florida summer evening. Hope everyone’s week went well, and the weekend goes the same.

Interesting Satellite Loop of Low-level Vortices In East Pacific

July 24, 2009 – A very interesting view on Visible satellite imagery over the Eastern Pacific Ocean yesterday. There was a series of low-level vortices embedded in the low-level cloud deck off the coast of Baja. It made for some entertaining satellite viewing for a few hours as seen in this satellite animation loop.

I’m a huge fan of staring at high-resolution visible satellite imagery for hours trying to pick out little feature of interest. I love to watch developing sea breeze boundaries and other low-level mesoscale features. These vortices stood out well on the visible satellite channel, along with some westward propagating waves within the clouds as well. I thought this animation was worth a post, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Slow Start To Atlantic Hurricane Season 2009 – Invest 97L

July 19, 2009 – The Tropical Atlantic basin has remained nearly non-active since the start of the season back on June 1st. There has been only a few small tropical waves of interest in the western Caribbean Sea in late June last month, but outside of that, the quiet tropics have been the norm.

June and July are normally the slowest months for Tropical Storm or Hurricane activity, but you still tend to get a few Tropical Depressions or disturbances to track mostly in the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean Sea. The problem so far here in 2009 is, there has been a significant amount of strong mid to upper-level winds across the Gulf, Caribbean and Western Atlantic region. This has made the environment very hostile for tropical cyclone formation throughout the first half of Summer. Florida has seen a significant amount of troughs digging in over the state making a very wet season, with records amounts of rain and thunderstorm days. The normal easterly wind flow of Florida’s summers has been seen little this year, with westerlies keeping the storms more active over the eastern coasts rather than the west coast.

Developing El Nino and The Atlantic Hurricane Season 2009

These same westerlies is what has put a cap on the 2009 Hurricane Season as of this time, and NOAA announced last week that El-Nino has begun and expected to intensify into the Winter 09/10. El-Nino is known for suppressing hurricanes from developing in the Atlantic basin by helping to produce stronger westerlies winds that create wind shear for developing storms. It’s still early in the season, and the peak hurricane months are still too come, and its not yet known how much El-Nino will have on the current season.

Tropical Wave Invest 97L – (SAL) Saharan Air Layer Dust – Wind Shear

Just recently in the last several days, we’ve been monitoring the first two noticeable eastern Tropical Atlantic waves that came off the coast of Africa. Both systems have struggled with strong wind shear and (SAL) Saharan Air Layer, which is African dust from the Saharan Desert. These dust storms can travel across the Atlantic as well creating subsidence and dry air, and can inhibit hurricane development as well. As a mater of fact, as I type this post, we here in Southeast Florida have been dealing with SAL the last several days with hazy skies.

The first wave of the two was ripped apart by the strong wind shear, but the second one has organized some, especially overnight and some today. It has been labeled Invest 97L and is currently being monitoring for any development. At this time the upper-air environment remains heavily sheared to the west of the system, and 97L might find itself being torn apart too in the coming days. Status updates on our Hurricane Chase Info page.

It will be interesting to see how the remainder of the season pans out, and if August and September will crank up in tropical weather activity. It only take one hurricane to strike your region to make it a busy season. In 1992 Category 5 Hurricane Andrew was the first hurricane of the season, and it struck South Florida on August 24th.

Hurricane Carlos Alive In The Eastern Pacific – Satellite Image

July 11, 2009 – Recently upgraded Hurricane Carlos in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, is looking a little better this afternoon. Although, as you can see in this Hi-rez satellite visible imagery, there seems to be a band of entraining drier air into Carlos convective circulation. You can see a very small eye, with dry air trying to wrap into the circulation on the western quadrants of the hurricane. This is likely to be short-lived as Carlos is expected to remain a hurricane into this upcoming week.

Hurricane Carlos is forecasted to intensify some in the coming days before encountering southwesterly wind shear, but remain over open waters of the Eastern Pacific, and move into the Central Pacific in a few days. Carlos is the second named hurricane of the 2009 East Pacific season.

South Florida TropicRain Percept Video Series – Part One

July 2, 2009 – Tranquil South Florida July tropical rains relax the mind on a hot summer day. Florida has seen a extremely rainy wet season since late May, and today was no different. After I rushed to get my lawn cut once again ahead of the afternoon rains, I cooled off with a Ice Coffee, and listened and watched the thunderstorm rains move in. It was very peaceful to just stop and listen to the rolling thunder and watch moderate rains fall over the lush green lawn and palm tree’s. Sometimes you just need to stop and enjoy your surroundings, and this afternoons views and sounds put me in that zone.

I decided to shoot some HD video scenes of the rain right from my front patio deck. I wanted to capture exactly what I was seeing and hearing from my sitting point. Once I setup my tripod, I never moved it again from in front of me, only paned the camera to capture the different scenes of a tropical afternoon in South Florida.

Sure I’m a Storm Chaser, and love to capture violent thunderstorms and hurricanes, but also just some blissful rains over a tropical landscape. I plan to add more videos like this in a series I’m calling “TropicRain Percept” throughout the summer of 2009. It was nice to just film from one place and really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I do, especially the sounds that can put you in a trance. Comments welcome!