Wow—the upper low south of L.A. on Thursday had enough ooomph to trigger high-based thunderstorms near the Palos Verdes Peninsula around midnight. These intensified and moved northwest over the Santa Monica Bay, and provided a spectacular late night lightning display for a couple of hours! And, I was extremely fortunate to be scheduled as weather observer at LAX from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning! I had a front row seat from the observation deck of the control tower, and I had my tripod and camera with me, thank goodness. Here are the best of the bunch —- the detailed account is below!

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I have worked part-time as a certified weather observer for about four years at Van Nuys Airport (VNY) and Los Angeles International AP (LAX). Typically, I am scheduled only one or two shifts per month at LAX, and that shift is usually a daytime shift. But, on August 14th, I had to be at LAX at 11 p.m. for the midnight shift. Usually, the weather here in summer is extremely benign, and all one has to be concerned with as a weather observer is the low cloudiness that tends to cling to the coastline. But, an upper circulation was approaching Southern California from the south, bringing with it some mid-level moisture and some unstable air, so there was an outside chance of some high-based thunderstorms overnight. It seems like 98 times out of 100 that nothing interesting happens when there is a slight chance of thunderstorms for our coastal sections. In fact, in my four years as an observer, I had yet to actually observe a lightning flash while on duty! And, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I have witnessed a spectacular nighttime/summertime lightning display locally in the past 20 years. Nevertheless, a photographer must be prepared for the unexpected! I worked at Albertsons 1 to 10 p.m. on Thursday, went home to grab my camera bags and tripod, and headed to LAX.

It was a little humid, but there were only a few piddly altocumulus around on my 40-minute drive from Westlake Village to LAX. As I approached LAX, a scattered to broken deck of low clouds materialized…same old story, it seemed. I issued a “SPECI” (special) observation shortly after 11 p.m. as the low cloud deck was a little below 1000 feet. I watched the local TV news and weather, and, yes, there was still that outside chance for thunderstorms overnight, but nothing was developing yet. That was at 11:20 p.m. My camera bag and tripod were on the floor, and I didn’t think there would be much to shoot on this shift.

I went down from the weather office (on the 19th floor of the control tower) to the 16th floor observation deck at 11:45 p.m. The low cloud deck remained broken, with about 5/8 coverage. Above that was some mid-level cloudiness, but is was difficult to see. As I turned to go back inside the tower, I caught a flash to the south, towards Palos Verdes—–YES!! A thunderstorm had developed! I rushed into the office and noted in the remarks of the hourly observation that there was lightning to the distant south of the station. (”Distant” implies that the activity is more than ten miles away). I checked the radar scan, and the Santa Ana Mountains radar showed a small, young cell quite close to Palos Verdes, and moving northwest. I called my friend Curt Kaplan of the NWS in Oxnard to let him know about the lightning, and then called my co-worker “John” at Van Nuys Airport. He was watching the activity to his south, too, though it was farther away. He didn’t have the low clouds intervening, though, and he said that the lightning was becoming increasingly active! I rushed back down the stairs to the observation deck at 11:57 p.m. I took a look to the south and southwest, and there was indeed plenty of lightning in the clouds above the marine layer stratus. Fortunately, the stratus was breaking up some, too. Then, a brilliant CG crashed to the earth maybe five miles to the south, towards Redondo Beach! That was not distant! I rushed back up the stairs and issued a SPECI observation which said that LAX was now experiencing a thunderstorm, with frequent lightning south and southwest. I grabbed my camera and tripod and blasted back down the stairs, and set up on the 16th-floor platform. Very nice cloud-to-ground lightning strikes were occurring about one or two every minute to my southwest and west now, approximately four to eight miles away. The thunder was loud enough to hear over the continuous and normal airport roar. There was still some low cloudiness, and these clouds blocked part of the bolts on their way to the ocean. That was a little irritating, but the low clouds added somewhat of a cool dimension and color to the shots.

Two or three thunderstorm cells developed near Palos Verdes and moved northwest over Santa Monica Bay, towards Oxnard. My view from LAX was excellent, and there was only brief light rain and no wind. All I had to do was to get the focus and composition and exposure settings right, and to click away! The foreground was relatively bright what with all of the airport lights. With my ISO at 100 and aperture around f7 to f8, I could take exposures of about 6 to 12 seconds duration. The nice CGs occurred frequently enough so that I was able to catch a good one every minute or two. At 12:45 a.m. I had to take another observation —- not much had changed since the SPECI, with a thunderstorm at the AP and frequent lightning to the southwest and west, moving northwest. From 1 a.m. to 1:40 a.m. I continued to shoot, as the cells grew a little more distant. The low clouds cleared nicely, too, but around 1:40 a.m. the close CGs seemed to cease. There were still some distant CGs to the WNW, towards Oxnard.

I continued the thunderstorm at LAX for the 1:50 a.m. observation, and then took it out in a special about ten minutes later. There was still some lightning, but it was all distant west and northwest now, and the radar showed a pronounced weakening trend. The show was over, and it was time to check out my shots and to post them on Stormbruiser!

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bill@stormbruiser.com

Believe it or not, I am still functioning and I am paying some attention to my web site.  I chased for practically all of May and most of June on the Plains (as tour director for Tempest Tours, tours 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6), and got back home here in sunny SoCal on July 2.   I am going to begin posting images very soon, so check the May and June 2008 sections for new stuff.  The digital images will be up first, and slides will have to wait to be scanned.  I can’t do everything at once.

I suppose I should mention how the chase season went.  It was VERY busy, as the pattern was good to very good for the most part, with only one down period in mid-May.   There were storms to chase nearly every day.  Tornado-wise, I would say the season was about average for me.  For May and June as a whole, it was not a bonanza period for photogenic tornadoes on the Plains.  It seemed that there were plenty of fast-moving tornadoes in the woods early in the spring.  There was a great three-day period from May 22 to 24 in OK and KS, and June was relatively lame tornado-wise.  I saw about 18 tornadoes, but most were distant and or weak and brief.  If you were a chaser and you missed out on the May 22-24 stuff, then it was likely a difficult year.

Okay, time to look at what I shot and to upload!  Remember, to see my images for 2008, find the May 2008 and June 2008 sections, and then click on the individual entry dates.

On June 30, 2006 I photographed an old house in Sitka, KS. I drove by it again in 2007…yep, still there! I wanted to photograph it again, and didn’t get a chance until today, again at sunset, and two days short of exactly two years later. I was stunned as I drove up to the place —- it had partially collapsed! The earlier photos show quite the leaned-over look, so I guess it isn’t surprising that the structure bought the farm. The north side continues to stand tall, sort of, but the first floor of the south side has been flattened by the weight of the roof and second floor. I suspect that a severe storm during May was the culprit, possibly the May 23 activity.

We were limited in our chase range today.  Some strong cells went up in extreme NW OK, but we played in W KS as we needed to get back to Denver.  A mediocre storm tower or two went up north of Syracuse.  The abandoned house and desolate countryside were slightly more photogenic than the thunderstorms.  There wasn’t much color except for the blue sky, so I changed these to black and white and had some fun with the software’s filter effects.

After lunch in Kadoka, we moseyed east on I-90 to Murdo, on U.S. 83. Unfortunately, it looked like we were exactly between two areas of surface convergence and potential storm development. The first area was to our south, in the Nebraska Sand Hills, south of Valentine. The other area was to our north, around Mobridge. I elected to go for the Nebraska target, in part because storms were already going up, and in part because we were nearing the end of the tour and were due back in Denver the following evening. North of Thedford by perhaps 10-15 miles we found ourselves in front of a little LP cell. It weakened as it moved NNE away from us. Additional activity was developing in linear fashion south-southwestward from our location. I went back south into Thedford, where we stopped for gas and goodies. And, if my recollection is correct here, I think we went north of Thedford again a few miles, were not impressed with the new cells to the west, and were going to check out new storms to the southwest. But when we arrived in Thedford, the cell to the NNW suddenly looked much better. We went north again about five miles to watch it, and the smooth laminar banding looked pretty wild for a while. It took on an HP character, so we went back south to Thedford and east about 15 miles to stay ahead. Some cool outflow winds smacked us as we loitered around the railroad tracks. The storms were not impressive. We went back west to Thedford and then west of town to get on the sunny side of the activity, and got some pretty rainbow and mammatus shots at sunset. Finally, we went east again to Thedford and then south to North Platte for the night. I think we were in Thedford five different times in less than three hours.

A long and somewhat disappointing day culminates in a spectacular sunset on the back side of severe storms in Corson County, SD.

We started out in Valentine, and targeted northwest South Dakota. From Bison, SD, we watched some strong convection go up to our north in SW ND. That activity appeared to be multicell with minimal tornado potential, so we held out hope for something isolated and stronger nearby. A cell did manage to go up west of Mud Butte, and we watched it fizzle to our west from a high point along U.S. 212. In order salvage something today, we went east and north back towards the ND storms, which were edging into Corson County, SD. This convection was somewhat linear, but with a nice look on its tail end. We stopped a little south of the storms at Isabel, where I finally had a cell phone signal (actually, I didn’t — I had to borrow the a cell phone from a guest!). I had a heck of a time booking about 11 rooms for our tour —- Pierre, Eagle Butte, Mobridge, all with no vacancy! I managed to get rooms in Lemmon, SD, on the SD/ND border. Sunset was approaching, and we headed north out of Isabel to get a closer look at the convection. The tail-end cell was a nice hailer, and we came up behind it to find a bunch of one-to-almost-two-inch hailstones littering the green fields. As the storm moved ESE, we stayed put and watched the mammatus display unfold in that direction. Our camera lenses feasted upon the vivid colors while the mosquitoes feasted upon our hemoglobin.

After a Chinese food lunch in Alliance, we needed to drift northeast and east just a little. I was relatively comfortable sticking close to the Rushville, NE, area, so we killed time at an old house north of town and then in the shade at a park in Rushville. It was getting towards 5 p.m. and not much was happening yet. Winds a little east of Rushville were weak and showing occasional northerly tendencies, so we drove east on U.S. 20 towards Merriman in northernwestern Cherry County. En route, a couple of impressive CBs went up to our east-southeast. Of course, the road network in Cherry County is awful, but on this chase we did pretty well with the roads which were available. A couple of strong cells were nearly stationary, near the west end of Merritt Reservoir. We jumped on the road south out of Nenzel, and plunged into the midst of the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest! Fortunately, a dense forest it is not, and we could easily see what our cells were up to. The north one was drifting northeastward towards our road. The south cell was still relatively stationary, and was obscured by the north cell. I needed to be east of the south cell. We barely skirted the core of the north cell where the road makes the hard jog east to Merritt Dam. The north cell exhibited some low-level banding and was likely a left split.

At Merritt Dam we were able to blast south again on Route 97, which would take us just east of the south cell. Things seemed to be working out pretty well so far! The storm was getting a good look on radar now—we could be in business—but we were still stuck with an absolutely horrible road network in the Sand Hills. If the cell started to move east, then we might have core issues where 97 jogs sharply west towards the updraft. If it remained stationary, then we would be in great shape. And, it did remain stationary as we came up on its southeast side along 97 near the North Loup River. The storm structure was just “okay” at this point. It looked like the storm was decaying somewhat, and I was a bit miffed. The updraft base was some 4-7 miles away, and was relatively benign.

The cloud-to-ground lightning activity in the rain and hail area to our north increased, and drew nearer, so we were forced southward on 97. The low-level structure began to tighten up and improve visually, too. A couple of more times the precip and lightning got too close and we had to bail south a few miles. The updraft of this supercell was now dropping south…maybe slightly WEST of due south! We had a bonafide right-moving supercell with good-to-great structure! We were on a decent road to view structure, but the cell was actually getting a little farther away from us now. As sunset drew near, the base of the storm began to get that “look”, funnel-like lowerings protruded from a low base, and the storm was tornado-warned! And, we were having an awful time trying to find a nice high point where we would have a good view beneath the base to the west. We raced up and down the sand hills along 97 with our eyes glued to the west. We were afforded brief glimpses of very intriguing lowerings. Was a tornado forming? Maybe —- we can’t see what’s going on! It looked like the base was rotating hard and that a legitimate funnel or two might be descending towards the ground. We just could not see the storm base, or the ground beneath the base. I stopped at a relative high point perhaps five miles north of Mullen, and we could again see the base, but we had continued problems seeing what was going on beneath the storm base. A nice “hook” of precip wrapped around the action area and another nice, broad funnel came down. It didn’t last too long, and we had problems seeing what it was doing, anyway.

We headed into Mullen and then west about six miles. The storm was now to our northwest, and was still dropping S to SSW. It had an HP look now, and the lightning activity against the soft light of dusk was very nice! We sat on a high point about a half mile south of Hwy 2 in Hooker County and shot stills and video while enjoying the light show. The cell weakened some as other activity moved in from the west, and we called it a day and headed to Valentine via Thedford.  On our way east and north, radar showed a pronounced intensification of the entire storm system in Hooker County, with a giant rotating comma shape!

Early activity in extreme eastern Wyoming lured us west to Lyman, NE.  The cells were high-based garbage, so we went back east through the Scottsbluff NM.  More interesting convection developed to the east, near Angora, and then to our north, towards Alliance.  I headed towards a somewhat discrete cell on the northwest side of Alliance.  It was moving ENE (the cell was, not the town), and we blasted NNE on 87.  We found ourselves between two storms between Alliance and Hay Springs.  The one to our southeast exhibited a  skinny, high-based, funnel cloud.  The nicely sculpted updraft to our northwest was an anticyclonically rotating low-precipitation supercell.  As it approached Hwy 87, it shriveled quickly and died.