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All Images Copyright Terry Pallister
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| Thunderstorm activity returned as another weakening cold front approached. Storms developed on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain before dark, but too far away to take pictures. After dark there was mostly sheet lightning as the storms died out. At 9:30 pm I managed to get one intracloud discharge as it poked out of the cloud and jumped up and back into the anvil above. The two images above are successive frames of this. Rather neat looking. |
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| Another night
of long distance storms. Unlike the May 23rd night storm with red
lightning, the air quality was quite different and led to yellowish brown
lightning. The same frontal system persisted for the second day with
storms developing in the late afternoon and early evening north of Lake
Pontchartrain.
I was lured to come out and set up at dark by frequent to continuous lightning far off to the ENE toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The single top shot above at 8:46 pm was the only one with a visible lightning channel barely poking out from the anvil. The illumination of the cloud layers and formation makes the picture worth inclusion. After the main storm weakened I noticed an occasional strike off to the NNW out over the Lake as a new cell formed. This cell was not very active, but did produce some strikes to the water. All show a distinct yellowish brown appearance, looking more like dirty air from local pollution trapped near the surface. The 4 strikes on the second row above occurred between 8:57 and 9:11 pm. As in the May 23rd red lightning night, these strikes were 10 to 15 miles away. |
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| For the third
night in a row storms formed along the stalled old frontal boundary to
the north. This storm was far away too, 10 to 12 miles to the NNW.
Once again the air quality was totally different leading to a very different
color of the background clouds. The strikes above occurred between
8:32 and 9:26 pm, not a lot of lightning for almost an hour. I continued
recording some lesser quality strikes until after 10 pm.
I particularly like the first image on the second row above for its branch detail. For a strike 10 miles away this is really unusual to get that much detail. The structure near where the strike hit is an elevated portion of the Pontchartrain Causeway that approximately splits the Lake in half. It takes about an hour to cross it in good weather. |
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| The same old
cold front finally got a push and it came through on this Monday afternoon.
The first lightning in the developing storms occurred on the front side
of the airport. I caught the first 2 shots above facing to the SSE
at 1:43 and 1:48 pm. Both were just over 3 miles away.
The storm continued to expand, so I moved to the other side of the building and faced ENE to capture the remaining 4 strikes above between 2:02 and 2:19 pm. Bally's floating casino boat can be seen in the foreground as the lightning struck beyond it over 5 miles away. No, lightning did not go down its smokestack as it appears to do in the third image on the bottom row. |
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| The long spring
dry spell finally broke down on this day. Even though I had gotten
lightning on several days in late May, only the May 31 storm produced a
small amount of rain in the New Orleans area.
This storm developed a little before 2:30 in the afternoon. Lightning was slow to occur. My best set up for this storm was the west balcony of the airport. At first lightning was mostly to the left of where I could aim around the side of the building. Finally a number of good strikes came around into view. These all occurred between 2:46 and 3:09 pm and ranged from 3 to 5 miles away generally toward the WSW. The last two images on the top row are successive frames and show the bottom part of the channel striking very different places on the ground. |