Saturday, February 5, 2011

Overlooked photos, day 3

Today's "missed" photo is just from this past summer. July 15 2010 isolated summer instability driven thunderstorms popped up in central and eastern Illinois. I decided to head out and shoot some time lapse of the pulsing cumulonimbus clouds at one of my "classic" spots while back home in Champaign. When I was just a harmless newcomer to the storm chasing and photography world, back before I had a drivers license or a clue in the world, David Bellmore and I would drive out here to watch thunderstorms rolling into the area. Many of my earliest thunderstorm intercepts occurred at this spot just south of Urbana. A few miles south of town there are some rollings hills caused by moraines left by the last glaciers. We would venture to this spot with great views to the east, and rolling hills on all other sides. I decided to go back in time and head back to this spot a few times this summer, just getting away from all things 21st century. No technology driven weather observing... just myself, the weather, and my cameras. I was probably out there for almost six hours watching these things from mid-afternoon, until the sun set behind the hill to my west, and the clouds went from bright white cauliflower to a hazy light blue illuminated only by disappearing twilight and the constant flash of inter-cloud lightning strikes. Dead silence with only the rare passing cars, and myself swatting off the thick coating of mosquitoes. I didn't post a lot photograph wise after these days, but several of the time lapses shot did make my 2010 DVD. Here's one shot looking south at a farmstead up the road, flush green soybeans and the mature thunderstorm anvil moving off away from me. If I do end up leaving the state of Illinois over the next couple years, I'll certainly miss this.

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