Chased Some Elegant South Florida Pulse-Storms Pictures

August 5, 2009 – Another round of isolated seabreeze induced lightning storms developed on Tuesday afternoon, which kept me entertained for a few hours. A combination of the lake and east coast breeze boundaries coming together, set off several storms that tracked very slowly southward along the boundary.

(Above pictures) – This was the first storm of the afternoon to develop, and it helped to enhance the Lake Okeechobee breeze boundary to sharpen up with it‘s outflow boundary the tracked north. It formed a impressive back sheared anvil as the storm developed into it’s mature stage. It made for some nice classic South Florida style pulse thunderstorm cloud structure. I love the deep blue skies with the white vivid storm crown. Very beautiful indeed.

(Above picture ) – By late afternoon, a new thunderstorm cell formed over the extreme eastern portions of Okeechobee County and western St Lucie County, FL. This storm actually went severe for a short time, and was warned on by the National Weather Service Office in Melbourne for damaging winds and small hail. The cell very slowly propagated southward down the established boundary and continued to back build into Martin County. There was very vivid cloud-to-ground lightning associated with this storm, and well defined heavy rain cores with some nice rain curtains.

Also earlier that morning, (photograph left), as I was driving along I-95 in Palm Beach County, there was this isolated coastal shower near or over Jupiter, FL. It developed a interesting crown, with surrounding deep blue skies on a beautiful South Florida early August morning. The structure of this little weak shower, with it’s wimpy anvil, just caught my eye and I stopped for a picture. Even the littlest cloud features can grab my attention. All in all, it turned out to by a typical mid-summer day, with classic sea breeze style showers and storms over the southern Florida peninsula. I love chasing massive Supercell thunderstorms in Tornado Alley, but I’ll always love from Florida convection in the summertime wet season. I grew up on it, and it lives with me. I hope you enjoyed my weather views for the day on Tuesday.

Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-127 Sonic Booms Florida

August 2, 2009 – On July 31, 2009 at about 10:40am ET – The landing flight path for the latest Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-127 mission, was planned to be coming in from the south end of South Florida and fly right between the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee and the Florida east coast. I was able to film the Sonic Booms as Endeavour went by moments before touching down at Kennedy Space Center. Turn up those speakers!

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.

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!

Lake Okeechobee Florida Water Spout and Gustnadoes Video

June 23, 2009 – Severe thunderstorm complex moves over Lake Okeechobee, FL and produces a Water Spout with several Gustnadoes as well. A combination of the west Florida coast sea breeze, and a outflow boundary set off a large severe thunderstorm complex over Central Florida in the early afternoon. This convective system raced southeastward towards southern Florida, and moved over the great Lake Okeechobee region.

A water spout developed on the leading edge of the gust front tucked in on the west side where there was still some decent inflow to the line of strong storms. As seen in the following video, there is a funnel cloud at cloud base, with a medium size circulation on the lake surface tracking southeast. In the foreground of the water spout video, you see several Gustnadoes racing south. The spout and funnel became hard to follow as rain curtains wrapped around and moved south with the complex of storms.

After the storm moved over my location on the northeast shore of Lake Okeechobee, I encountered strong straight-line winds maybe near 50mph, with pea size hail. Lightning was also present, but remain mostly over the smooth waters of the lake. All in all, a very interesting afternoon on Florida largest lake.

Dr Greg Forbes from The Weather Channel, analyzes waterspout
On the evening of June 23, 2009, Dr Greg Forbes from The Weather Channel, analyzed My Lake Okeechobee, Florida waterspout video shot earlier in the day. He get’s pretty excited over the several circulations on the water surface, and gives his view on how he thinks the setup for the waterspouts developed.

Similar Waterpout Posts:
Captured Waterspout Offshore Sanibel Island Florida Pictures
Pompano Beach Florida Waterspout Pictures

Record Heat Wave For Southeast Florida Fathers Day

June 22, 2009 – The first day of summer 2009 in Central and South Florida came in like gangbusters with record heat. Temperatures were running several degree’s above record highs in many locations along the Florida east coast. It was truly a scorcher of a day, and being poolside or indoors was almost a must.

Vero Beach and Ft Lauderdale both set new hot temp records of 98°F for the day. Now throw in dew points running in the upper 70’s to near 80°F, with very humid conditions, and heat indices were nearing 107°F.

It was truly hot for Fathers Day and the first day of summer over much of Florida. Florida gets hot, but conditions like these are rare and only setup every few years or longer. A heat ridge parked over the state, with extremely high atmospheric moisture levels in the low-levels helped to combine the perfect setup for a South Florida heat wave. Even the Meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Miami had some comments about the current heat activity in their morning area forecast discussion.

THIS COULD REALLY BE ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS TODAY. YESTERDAY SAW RECORD HIGHS ALL UP AND DOWN THE EAST COAST…WITH FT. LAUDERDALE HITTING THE ALL TIME RECORD HIGH FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE…98F.

PLENTY OF SUN IS EXPECTED TODAY WITH JUST SOME HIGH CIRRUS (AS WAS THE CASE YESTERDAY). GIVEN THIS…AND THE WARM AIR ADVECTION/HOT RIDGE AXIS OVERHEAD THIS AFTERNOON…DECIDED TO INCREASE TEMPS ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST…TO LEVELS THAT I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER FORECAST FOR IN SOUTH FL.

Today is shaping up to be a carbon copy of Fathers Day with expected record highs and very dangerous temperatures for folks outside and for older residents of South Florida. Second day in a row with high heat advisories that run until 7:00pm ET.

SOUTHEAST FLORIDA HIGHS OF NEAR 100 WITH HEAT INDICES AROUND 110 ACROSS THE EAST COAST METRO. A HEAT ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT FOR THE EAST COAST METRO DUE TO THESE EXTREME TEMPERATURES.

It’s very important to drink plenty of fluids and the first signs of feeling overheated, head indoors as soon as possible. Also be sure to check on elderly residents in your community that you are aware, and just make sure they are ok in this Florida heat wave of June 2009. Stay cool out there!

Classic Early Summer Florida Sea Breeze Lightning Storm

June 4, 2009 – I was out and about shooting another classic Florida sea breeze lightning storm Thursday evening. This storm develop where two outflow boundaries from earlier convection collided over the Glades and Okeechobee county line in the northwestern Lake Okeechobee waters region. It had beautiful and vivid lightning, with the surrounding sounds of birds, frogs and rolling thunder. It really set the mood for a typical early summer Florida interior thunderstorm. At times, it showed some interesting structure, including some mid-level banding and a few small low-level inflow tails.

Taylor Creek, Florida Developing Strong Lightning Storm

Thursday May 28, 2009, continued to be extremely busy with afternoon lightning storms over southern Florida. I was closely watching this developing strong thunderstorm that was forming along a gust front boundary and the east coast sea breeze. It developed several weak non-rotating wall clouds that kept getting undercut by moderate outflow winds from the southwest. The storm continued east into St Lucie County where it became a vivid lightning producer with small hail. It made for some interesting storm structure for a short-time.

People Hit Ft Lauderdale Beaches Before Afternoon Storms

I was out shooting video for The Weather Channel on Tuesday morning May 26, 2009, of beach goers trying to get in some sun and beach in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. This time of year as the wet season begins, the best time to hit the beach is before the afternoon lightning storms move in from the west. A few offshore morning convective showers over the Gulf stream were the only clouds in sight. Later in the afternoon, several severe thunderstorms moved in over metro Southeast, FL.

Severe Thunderstorm Video Over Lake Okeechobee Florida

May 26, 2009 / 5:30pm ET – The east and west coast sea breeze boundaries converged over the western shores of Lake Okeechobee, helping to produce a line of severe thunderstorms. This line of storms tracked eastward over the lake, producing some impressive storm structure. Shelf clouds, strong straight-line winds, and heavy rains were the main weather associated with these strong storms.

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