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All Images Copyright Terry Pallister
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| I was very late for this storm, just not being aware of it until after it had formed near the airport and drifted eastward. I never heard thunder inside. It has to be rather close for the sound to make it inside our office. I was able to get these more distant strikes as the storm weakened between 2:02 and 2:19 pm. They were 6.5 and 8.5 miles away. |
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| Before sunset
a cell began to develop NW out over Lake Pontchartrain. This was
to create a problem that I had not faced before. The sun was low
enough in the sky to send some filtered light through the underneath of
the cloud base which altered the appearance to a lighter sky tone.
It wouldn't be until early 2001 before I figured out the solution to handle
this problem. The solution turns out to be to reduce the exposure
of the camcorder several steps more than I normally do for day lightning.
The pictures above had been adjusted more for color and gamma correction
to make them look much better. Without these adjustments the bolts
look more washed out and overexposed.
The storm was not very active, but it did produce really strong bolts that were just 2 to 3.5 miles away. They struck in a short 10 minutes span from 6:49 to 6:59 pm. The first 2 shots from Camcorder 1 occurred in the same flash sequence. Can you see the matching captures from Camcorder 2? |
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| Very frustrating
storm. About 5:30 pm storms developed off to the northeast and drifted
toward me, but far too slowly to come close enough to shoot video.
As other cumulus towers built I was encouraged to wait. None produced
much lightning and died off. As darkness fell the last of the cells
died out and there were no important cumulus clouds left. So, I took
down the 2 video cameras and the still camera and went home. As I
was walking the dogs I saw lightning starting right where I had set up
to shoot just a few minutes before. Somehow new activity developed
out over Lake Pontchartrain after the heating of the day had ended.
I rushed back out to set up. I aimed both camcorders at the main action and then went to set up the still camera. I didn't notice the activity shifting to the left enough to be out of one camcorder's view and moving out of the view of the other one. By the time I set up the still camera the activity ended. I ended up missing quite a few very nice strikes by trying to shoot with too much equipment. So, in this case, more cameras was a big hindrance. The frustrating part is simply that if I had waited about 15 minutes longer when I was first set up earlier, I would have had quite a show on both camcorders and the still camera as well. The shots above struck between 9:15 and 9:30 pm NNW over the lake and were 8 miles away or more. |
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| The very next night a storm developed over Lake Pontchartrain just after dark. Rather unusual for so many storms forming this late over the lake. I set up the camcorders only, not wanting to miss out on so much as I had the night before. From 8:18 to 8:36 pm I was able to capture these nice shots with both camcorders, except for the last shot with Camcorder 1 above that occurred at 9:15 as the storm drifted SW. They were all quite far off, over 9 miles away or more. |
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| The final day of the very wet pattern with about 12 inches of rain for June. Very dark black clouds approached from the WSW around 3 pm. I waited and waited for lightning to really start to pop, but it never did. I got the first shot above as the storm approached facing WSW from the west balcony with one camcorder at 3:17 pm about 6.5 miles away. After the storm passed over I managed to get the second shot above with the other camcorder about 7 miles away at 3:26 pm from the east balcony, and facing NE. |