Storm Chasing 16 Feb 2011

[Paul Haese]

Big day yesterday. First up I drove to Kadina to finalise some work on a ceiling and then drove home (300 km). Next with predicted electrical storms I decided to go on a chase. I was pretty tired but a couple of coffees and some thing to eat and I was off.

I set off towards my usual spot but decided that heading towards Murray Bridge was better. I got to Murray Bridge and saw to large cells off in the distance. Off I chase to Tailem Bend. At that point I contacted Andrew and asked him where the best storms were on the info pages he gets. I ended up heading towards Lamaroo and beyond. I find the storms but none are producing lighning However I did get the image at the link below.

Click here for rainbow image.

Next I decide to head back towards Adelaide as I am now 204km away from home. On my way home I find another storm in my path at Geranium. I start taking frames of that and see another one close by which I think will be better. It has a rain foot under it and looks to be producing lightning. I watched the sunset through the rain and was enchanted by the view.

click herefor image of Geranium storm.

With that I decided to travel home as it was getting pretty dark. I ended up driving through the rain foot and have to say I have never seen so much rain anywhere including far north Queensland. The rain was so bad I had to travel at 20kph with the wipers on high and I could still only see 20 meters in front of me. To boot there was lightning all the way around me but non striking the ground. It took a good 20 minutes to travel through the rain and take the image attached below.. This is the only actual lightning shot I got all day despite the trigger seeing 300 changes in light intensity and triggering the camera to take shots. It does have the moon in it so it is sort of astro related too.

I got home at 10pm, knackered from all the driving but certainly richer for the experience. 700 odd km later and can now say I have done a real storm chase.

[leon]

Nice going Paul, excellent result, for the time you put into it, love the reddish tint on the cloud tops.

Leon

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Good to see you have gone over the 500km mark for a chase Paul I sometimes do that and more on a Friday arvo if there are storms about, gotta love the chase... Nice work on the photo, nicely composed, shame it isn't a pulsing positive strike that came from the storm, it would have been a ripper... The trigger you are referring to which one is that? Would have it been better if you just let the camera do the shooting and take longer exposures, one after another? Takes more frames but allows you to capture a bit more I think during nocturnal lightning displays.

[bloodhound31]

These things have such an extra beautiful dynamic when lit by the moon from above while the show goes on inside the clouds.
Great capture Paul!

Baz.

[Paul Haese]

Andrew I am using the Lightning Trigger seen http://www.lightningtrigger.com/

During the day light shots I use the trigger and then during the night shots I also use it but set the camera to 20" on manual and let the trigger start the exposure. It is very effective on reducing the actuations (already up to 40000 actuations).

For daylight stuff I just follow the tips from the site on settings and this works quite well. Although I tend to use a higher ISO to capture more. The Geranium shot I produced over 300 actuations and none showed lightning but I could clearly see c-c lightning lighting up the clouds. Interesting to watch but not productive. I was hoping for that setting to see a ground strike and that would have made my year just for that shot with all that lovely colour in the rain.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[hotspur (Chris)]

Great image,thanks for the link of the trigger.