{"id":5835,"date":"2011-05-20T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T08:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=5835"},"modified":"2011-09-19T13:33:02","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T21:33:02","slug":"may-20-2011-st-leos-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2011\/05\/20\/may-20-2011-st-leos-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"May 20, 2011 St. Leo’s Fire (Kingman County, KS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two Stormbruiser pages were made for today — the chase account<\/a>, and this one, which contains the colorful storm images captured near sunset.<\/p>\n

The atmosphere above Pratt and Kingman counties in Kansas provided a jaw-dropping display of color and cloud structure at sunset today.\u00a0 The afternoon and evening chase around Pratt County and western Reno County was mildly entertaining, as a handful of marginally severe storms exhibited some brief low-level rotation and lowerings.\u00a0 We placed ourselves in front of a tail-end supercell along the Pratt\/Kingman county line towards the end of the chase.\u00a0 This cell was not tornadic, but we were impressed by the wicked cloud base and structure in and around the RFD cut into the rear of the updraft base.\u00a0 Near Cunningham, KS, we permitted the storm base to drift overhead and a little east of us.\u00a0 Some nuisance rain fell on us along U.S. 54, so I scooted south on a paved road from Cunningham towards St. Leo.\u00a0 There was nothing but bright, blue sunny skies behind the storm, and I knew that a great storm photography opportunity was developing as the sun neared the horizon.<\/p>\n

As we drove south through western Kingman County, the light and color in the sky were becoming more insane by the minute, and it was time to stop — anywhere!\u00a0 We edged westward on a dirt road to a slightly elevated and flat field of wheat, and quickly exited the van.\u00a0 A small grain bin back to the east was nice to have for image composition!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We spent perhaps ten minutes at this location, and then I decided to relocate, though I can’t recall exactly why!\u00a0 I think we were getting rained on again!\u00a0 We went another mile or two south towards St. Leo, and spotted a large, pretty, isolated, and sunlit house up on a hill on the east side of the road.\u00a0 Chad steered the van 2\/3 of the way up the driveway, and we stopped to take more images.\u00a0 We were a little tentative — what would the house residents think if they saw eight people gathered around a white van in their driveway, all of them taking pictures of their house?!\u00a0 Lucky for us, no one was around and no one came out to see what we were up to.\u00a0 The storm base behind the structure was a fiery orange\/red…I think I’ll call it “St. Leo’s Fire.”\u00a0 We stayed out as the sunset light faded, and caught some lightning in the storm as it continued to our northeast.<\/p>\n

My old Queen albums proudly proclaimed that “no synthesizers were used” in the production of the music therein.\u00a0 Here “no adjustments were made in Photoshop to artificially boost the saturation of the colors!”\u00a0 I have made these appear as close to reality as possible.\u00a0 Contrast was increased a little in some cases to help “liven up” the image, but this is really how the sky appeared on this evening!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Stormbruiser pages were made for today — the chase account, and this one, which contains the colorful storm images captured near sunset. The atmosphere… [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":[44,23,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-44","7":"category-stormy-skies","8":"category-sunsets-and-storms","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5835","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=5835"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5863,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5835\/revisions\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}