The rest of 2010

I'm bad at best of. . . I'd rather have new!

Panoramic of previous blog pic.

Leftovers of a severe thunderstorm at old lookout peak at I-235 and 25th.

I miss lightning.

Loved the saucer shape this storm anviled out to.



2nd season's only tornado warned storm.  The left side of this produced baseball (some claim up to softball) size hail.  One large stone found out in a field 3 hours after the storm was short of the state record by 1/2".



Found out my wife didn't see the double rainbow guy video, so she thought I went insane saying "Double Rainbow!" and "What does it mean?".



Harvest Full moon at Midnight.  Couldn't sleep.
















Happy 2011 and may we hear thunder in the new year.

More 2010



Early evening storm off to the south of Wichita.



Panoramic of above mentioned storm

and sometimes, I just like sunsets.

More of 2010



One of the hail storms in Wichita this year.  This Squall line built lazily in early April and ended up dumping hail on the East side of Wichita for nearly an hour.  I caught this 180 degree capture before heading to class.  Unfortunately, it hit while in class.



Ah, Lightning.  I swore I watched streamers rise in the field in front of me.





The big May 10th storm.  They cancelled a day of River Fest for this and ultimately decided to move the festivities to June (good idea).  No solid tornado, but we did see rotation aloft and spinning wheat.  Lack of afternoon heating kept this killer at bay.  It roughly hit Wichita during rush hour.  This monster was made up of 20+ photographs and proved to be a nightmare to merge.



Solstice Eclipse

Had a few issues with clouds, camera settings, and cold batteries, but all in all it was awesome to watch . . . and tell stories of the Mayan Calender.

More of 2010

Also from late January.  I've always told myself in a big pea-soup fog I wanted pictures of the Catholic church in Bel Aire.

• Second shot by the traintracks at Oliver and K-254.  Just happened to drive by and look over.

2010 recap

Here it is an hour before December and I write this with a heavy heart.  I didn't see any tornadoes this year.  Technically, there was one there, we think, rotation in the clouds, rotation in the wheat before us, but no visible tornado.

I'm thinking about selling photos next year online and in a little shop in Kechi when it's built.  I'll entertain ideas on whether to sell them framed, unframed, in sets, as a one shot deal, or as part of a series.  Let me know your thoughts either here or on facebook. 

As always, thanks for being out there.  I get stats on visits to the pages, and I'm not doing too bad.  Don't be shy on comments.

Now onto 2010 in recap:

January

Had fog and freezing temps all morning.  At work I could see the trees across the street had a little frost on them.  Thought I would head home and grab the camera.  As I neared the house, the fog thickened and it became colder.  It frosted heavier on the trees and one of the farmers just tilled his land causing a nice contrast in color.

Suddenly the trees were flashing by us


Clouds reflecting fast across your eyes

We turned into a frozen meadow

The wind the only sound

'We'll know where when we get there' you said

Sonic Youth "Hoarfrost"
 
Special thanks to Mike Taylor for introducing me to the term.
 
 
More later.

2010

Turkey time is almost here and working on a recap of 2010.  It was a lame year, but had decent pics.

Stay tuned.

Happy Fall

From our October Blaze Maple in the back yard.

Double Rainbow, What does it mean???

No tip of the hat to the YouTube dude.
I didn't stand out in the yard yelling "What does it mean"?

Kansas State Squall line

It's amazing how many people you are out of town at the same location.  On Saturday September 25, 2010 a rather nasty squall line went through Manhattan, Kansas as the KState Football game was underway.  The first two pictures are from long time friend Micaela Barnes who was at the game.  Notice the low hanging clouds at the bottom of the first photo that were slowly rotating.

These were lifted from the Eagle and ESPN.

Apparently the professionals can't get the Physics right either.

Second Season 091510 Tornado warnings

I've been hoping for weather, really of any type.  I noticed earlier in the week that maybe there might be some sort of storms going through the area today.  When I went out this afternoon, I was pleasently suprised.  A cold front touched several strong storms in the area.

The ones pictured here had funnels associated with it in Reno County and over Cheney Lake,  I watched this wall cloud collapse and reform three times before the rumors of hail associated with the storm made me decide to go home, that and a dead battery on the camera.    

The area had strong updraft (note the rain curtains on both sides) and gobbled the small clouds that were forming below it in the humidity getting absorbed by the storm.  Even though I really didn't see any of the funnels, it was nice to go on an early fall, second season run.

clouds

Nothing else really going on . . .

Ross & Millie's Blog: Largest Hailstone

Ross & Millie's Blog: Largest Hailstone

Something over from Ross Janssen at KWCH. This links to pictures of the new record hailstone that fell in South Dakota. The thing to think about is this fell, set in a field, and probably was rained on and melted some before being found.

Storms 072410

NOAA warned of a cold front a couple days ago.  The temps went from 100 to 85.

These first two pictures were taken at Oliver and 109thN.  Harvey County had a Severe Thunderstorm warning around 4:45pm when the first two shots were taken.  I can't decide if the large area of white on the first picture (Taken towards Newton) was a hail core or just very heavy rain.

The second was looking back towards Wichita.

The second group of pictures were taken just before the Severe Thunderstorm warning for NW Sedgwick.  The storm had set up several individual storms that were beginning to squall out.  When a storm squalls out there is a power sharing among the individual cells.  Sometimes this causes cells to power up temporarily and cause heavy rain, hail.  This is what occurred yesterday as the storm was gathering.  It was also powered by the heat of the day, and as the sun set and the local area cooled down from the cold front moving through the storms lost their punch and Wichita received some sorely needed rain.  The Butler Co Storm (3rd pic) had a nice inflow and possible wall cloud on it.  It didn't last.  Both storms had little areas of rotation caused by the winds of the cold front smacking it around, but as stated the storm evened out and lost power.

July 12, 2010 lighting

I took a couple hundred storm photos this night and found that the photo editor (Picasa, yeah . . . big spender) had a time lapse feature.

I didn't get many straight bolts on the storm but a lot of cloud to ground.  When running thought the photos in a strip type line, I noticed a lot of lightning that wouldn't stand out alone in a pic, but streamed together was interesting.

July 12th, 2010 later that day

Walked out of school and found another storm down south.

I put this on KAKE.com attempting to get some publicity for the website.

This storm was slowly dying and generating a lot of lightning.  I stayed out watching the storm for about 45 minutes trying a couple of different techniques to capture.

There were continuous cloud to cloud lightning but only a few cloud to ground.

Didn't have any issues other than lots of bugs.

July 12th, 2010 mid afternoon

Left work and luckily had the camera with me.

On the left side I thought we might have a wall cloud, ultimately it didn't rotate or do much.  NOAA did refer to this as having a pseudo-cold front.  Notice the line of clouds just off the horizon right of center.

There was a lot of rain out to the northwest but otherwise not too much going on.

July 11, 2010 and all is quiet

Some storms did move south of the border.  Other than that, not much.

Manmade Thunder and Lightning

Because nature is only providing rain . . .

Late Forth show due to rain