{"id":11151,"date":"2014-06-21T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=11151"},"modified":"2014-08-20T22:37:11","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T06:37:11","slug":"june-21-2014-big-cgs-at-big-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2014\/06\/21\/june-21-2014-big-cgs-at-big-mac\/","title":{"rendered":"June 21, 2014 Big CGs at Big Mac"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"140621_2294zm_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The final full day for the Tour 6 group was June 19th, and there was nothing to chase between Plankington, SD, and Ogallala, NE, via Grand Island.\u00a0 On the 20th we had the group back to Denver, and on the 21st the new Tour 7 group, with Tempest guide Kelly Delay, was ready to hit the road.\u00a0 There was a chance for severe weather well up into South Dakota on the 21st, but I elected to go for convection which was expected along Interstate 80 in western Nebraska.\u00a0 Storm towers developed in northern Weld County, CO, and we patiently monitored these from west of Peetz.\u00a0 The storm bases were high and there was little organization.\u00a0 The long dirt road towards the precip area was much more photogenic than the clouds.<\/p>\n

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\"140621_2015_Peetz_CO\"<\/a> \"140621_2017_Peetz_CO\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The activity built to the north and east a bit, and as sunset approached we were watching a high-based storm with some occasional lightning near Lewellan, NE.\u00a0 A shelf cloud feature, or perhaps the front end of a high-based rotating storm, developed along the western end of Lake CW McConaughy.\u00a0 This was looking nice as the low-angle sunlight and colors improved, and CG brilliant lightning was occasionally teasing us.\u00a0 We had a great opportunity to photograph some spectacular lightning against the colorful and stormy western sky, but I had to find a decent spot to set up that wasn’t going to soon be wet, or too dangerous to set up because of the lightning.\u00a0 We headed east along 92 on the north side of the lake (I’m not going to type out that lake name more than once —- we’ll call it by its nickname:\u00a0 “Big Mac”).\u00a0\u00a0 The road went up and down the hills and gullies and we passed by a bunch of marinas and beaches.\u00a0 Nothing here seemed to have good views back to the west, darn it.<\/p>\n

Well, I knew that there was an excellent spot for views to the west up ahead.\u00a0 This spot was on the dam on the east end of Big Mac.\u00a0 But, it was still another 10 or 15 miles ahead, and the good light wasn’t going to last forever.\u00a0 We finally reached Route 61, on the east end of the lake, with the dam “overlook” site a few miles to the south.\u00a0 The light and the clouds and the lightning were too good RIGHT NOW, however!\u00a0 We stopped near the intersection for a minute, but then headed north a mile or so to the top of a hill with good views to the north and the west.\u00a0 This worked out pretty well!\u00a0 The light on the storm to the northwest was fantastic, but there wasn’t much lightning in that direction.<\/p>\n

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\"140621_2035_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_9009_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_9012_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_9013_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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There was plenty of lightning to the west and southwest, though!\u00a0 I had the camera on the tripod, set the shutter speed at about 3 to 5 seconds, and had no trouble catching lightning in the frame for at least half of the shots!\u00a0 Unfortunately, the really nice sunset colors were winding down and were more to the northwest than to the southwest.\u00a0 I bet that the views from the dam overlook were not too shabby, either!<\/p>\n

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\"140621_2166_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2206_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2213_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2241_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2252_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2294_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a> \"140621_2294zm_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a>\"140621_2252zmb_Lk-McCny_NE\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The final full day for the Tour 6 group was June 19th, and there was nothing to chase between Plankington, SD, and Ogallala, NE,… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,50,16,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-60","7":"category-eyesores","8":"category-lightning","9":"category-sunsets-and-storms","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11169,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11151\/revisions\/11169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}