Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Engagement dust storm

I'm way behind on posts, but I'll get an update going on the most recent happenings. Been extremely busy with academia lately, trying to get this whole meteorologist thing finalized. Sunday afternoon I was scheduled to shoot engagement photos of my friend Morgan and her fiance Kyle. As the time approached, thunderstorms began erupting all around the area, potentially threatening our shoot. We were scheduled to get together around 5 or 6 PM, so around 3 I decided to head out to the area we would be taking the photos, and just play around with the storms until they were ready for me. There was nothing to see at all, as one would expect with high instability but no wind shear to speak of, aside from the aid of a couple of boundaries floating around the area. I got a phone call from Morgan letting me know they were ready when I was, so I began heading back that direction. It was on my way that I noticed some runaway outflow that had long since outrun it's parent thunderstorm that was kicking up a huge plume of dust. The dust plume was right in my path, and I actually got a text from Morgan wondering what was going on as they were right in the thick of things at that moment. I drove directly for the outflow and was soon in the midst of a pretty fun little Illinois dust storm. I actually wound up getting slammed by a tight circulation as a gustnado spun up and moved right over me, kicking up field debris and tossing my camera/tripod as I was rolling video. As I have been busy, it has been slow going on getting through any photos, but I figured I would share a sample of what I have at this point. And, here's a link to some of the dusty video from Sunday evening.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEj_ZeOVJG0&feature=youtu.be 

No comments: