A severe thunderstorm passes to the south of a farm in rural Wayne County, Ohio as bright sunshine illuminates barn and field.
One good thing came from my extended storm chase that afternoon. While my hopes of spotting a powerful approaching storm were washed away by torrential rains, the drive home revealed the beautiful contrast between peaceful, sunlit farm scene and a threatening sky. — September 21, 2018
The thunderhead of a passing storm with mounds of mammatus clouds beneath.
So I went out chasing what promised to be a big, powerful thunderstorm about 30 miles away only to be greeted by a wall of water. I get home, have dinner, and discover I’m under a gigantic thunderhead with cirrus fringes and gobs of beautiful mammatus beneath all surrounded by a beautiful blue sky. Storm chaser Dorothy was right, “There’s no place like home.” — September 21, 2018
That’s not fog that car is headed towards — it’s a “wall of water — torrential rain about to descend upon your intrepid photographer ending his remote storm pursuit.
Thunderbird. Clouds of the approaching storm spread across the western sky.
A well-defined line of storms was headed our way and looked like a good possibility for shelf cloud photos, so I headed out in the early evening to intercept the storm.
Radar Image of the Approaching Weather – My Location Near Center
Things don’t always work out the way one expects and that may be especially true with weather. The rule proved true but I wasn’t terribly disappointed because of the way things worked out.
Evening Flight. Sunset colors illuminate the clouds. A tiny dot in the upper right-hand area of this image is an airliner on an evening flight.
I could hear rumbles of thunder to the north and caught a glimpse of two lightning bolts: one from cloud to ground, the other within a gap in the clouds. But as the line of storms came nearer, the sun was sinking lower reducing the energy driving the weather. While the prospects of strong storm images dimmed, the developing sunset lit the roiling clouds in beautiful and unexpected ways.
Fiery Wave. A swirl of storm clouds lit by sunset.
Storm clouds moved and swirled as they passed across the western sky and rolled overhead, changing from minute to minute. No shelf cloud to be had but the show was wonderful.
Maw of the Storm. Colors fading and clouds closing in.
All but ended, clouds closed in ending the evening’s show, the conclusion of a glorious sunset storm.
Darkness Falls. Clouds cover the sky and the blue of nightfall tints the scene.
Sword of Mars: A bright Perseid meteor streaks to the left of planet Mars. You can see constellation Sagittarius just above the glow along the treeline.
This year’s Perseids meteor shower peak bridged two nights and sky conditions promised to be better Sunday than Saturday’s cloudy mess. So, off I went again to wait for meteors. On the recommendation of fellow skywatchers, I headed to a nearby Ohio state park which has a spot with the reputation of distant horizons and darker skies than we’re used to; that turned out to be true.
It was a long night at Findley State Park. The Perseids didn’t seem particularly active and really didn’t become noticeable until after 11:00 but there were a few showy fireballs to be enjoyed. I managed to capture a couple of bright meteors over the several hours I spent standing on the dam, looking up — my neck is still sore — and having all of my equipment getting covered in heavy dew. I finally left at 1:30 AM when all of my lenses had become fogged up and showed no sign of clearing.
Here is an extremely bright, and very slow fireball just within the right edge of the frame. I remember the streak appearing warm in color, yellowish, but the camera recorded the spectral colors you see here. The lights near the bottom of the picture are artificial lights onshore, not reflections of stars.
Finally, I packed up my dripping-wet gear and headed to the parking lot at about 1:30 AM but made the mistake of looking up before getting into my car. There was an amazing patch of stars surrounded by the black outlines of trees — the path of the Milky Way directly overhead. I grabbed a few shots with a lens that had somehow managed to defog, and reluctantly left for home. The experience, overall, was worth being tired and sore today.
Looking up from the parking lot: “My god, it’s full of stars” is a phrase associated with a scene from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” spoken by David Bowman as he entered an alien-created “stargate.”
Catching up on postings, I’ll start with last night’s efforts watching for meteors. While waiting for the sky to darken, I enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the lake at Letha House Park West, a Medina County (Ohio) Park System property. (I have after-hours access.) I’m glad I arrived early even if the wait for darkness was all the longer.
A Showy Sunset made Waiting for Meteors a Pleasure.
The annual Perseids meteor shower was highly-anticipated, not only because it reliably produces many bright “shooting stars,” but because Moon was in its new phase August 11 — no natural light pollution! Unfortunately, with thin haze and clouds overhead, human-produced light pollution from Medina, Ohio was quite bad! Still, we did see several “fireball” meteors — flashes brighter than the planet Venus — and I did capture a few. Best of the night showed two, yes two (2) meteors glowing at the same time! This is a stack of two sequential 15-second frames and both meteors appear in both frames at different stages of their burn! Close-up viewing of the streaks shows faint lines leading to the flares of these little fireballs heading generally left to right (east to west) in this crop from a 15mm fisheye lens field of view.
Pretty Pair of Perseids: Two Perseid meteors glow high in the southern sky over constellation Sagittarius.
Now, I’m assuming these are meteors; there’s something odd about the timing and appearance of the streaks and flares. There would have been a one- or two-second delay between the end of the first exposure and the beginning of the second, which seems long for a meteor. No Iridium satellite flares were predicted via Heavens Above. Time was 10:30, Saturday, August 11.
Meteors became a bit more frequent around midnight, which is typical, but the atmosphere was playing havoc with our observing. We left the observing site at about 1:00 AM with clouds building ever-thicker and lenses fogging up. It was a fun night watching for meteors… even if, or maybe because, they were a rare sight!
“Not An Entrance”
Approaching roll cloud/shelf spanned many miles across the western horizon as it ushered in heavy rain and some thunder. (Panorama)
A group of storms spread across the Northern Ohio area June 9, so I went out to watch the arrival of one particularly active area. My panorama depicts the sheer expanse of the approaching weather with turbulent clouds overhead and an enormous roll cloud (or shelf, I’m still not sure) approaching. The features ushered in moderately high winds and torrential rain.
Fascinating feature wherein an approaching line appears to sweep up less mobile cloud cover. An even more massive line of cloud is following on.
This photo shows a small portion of a tremendous structure but fascinatingly shows a folded space where lines of cloud converge. A larger structure, a gigantic roll cloud, lurks in the background. My favorite camera for landscapes was unavailable but I’m pretty happy with this image.
