Coincidentally, the day of joining the “Storm Spotter Network” and passing my “spotter awareness exam”, a significant thunderstorm starts rolling across the region.
The initiating location of the storm was in the Alberta foothills off Highway 16, and unfortunately, that’s a 3+ hour drive from Edmonton. I decided to wait patiently and see what this storm would evolve into.
The dense red area on the above radar image shows a ‘bow echo’ – an area generally with intense, damaging winds, strong hail, and a potential for tornado formations. Although it would have been interesting to attempt the drive and intercept this, other storm spotters were much closer and already intercepting this storm (the red dots are other chasers).
It wasn’t too long of a wait as the storm was moving Easterly at over 50km/h.
Soon, Mammatus clouds started forming.
The skies continued to darken, and more clouds rolled in.
A short while later, you could see flashes of lightning off in the distance, but it was too far to hear the rumble of thunder.
I took several hundred photos, experimenting with different camera settings, hoping to catch some bolts of lightning.
Heavy rain moved in and I had to move the camera back to keep it dry. I managed to capture this bolt of lightning just before bringing the camera inside as the rain and wind intensified. The lightning isn’t striking the building you see here, but is still off in the distance.
When it was all over, I believe that I managed to get a few good photographs including this one here which is actually a merge of several other photos taken throughout the night.
Be sure to check out my other weather related posts and storm chasing excursions.
