The Big Storm Picture

October 7 Chase

2011-10-11T13:42:00.000-05:00

Got a chance to chase in Nebraska on October 7 -- we had a nice cold front come through and linger in the area, touching off a few brief mini supercells mixed in with storm clusters and more linear segments. Basically, not a great setup, but you can't complain about any convection you get in October!

The southern side of a storm in central Nebraska. Not too exciting, but like I said, can't complain for October!

Best thing to do on a boring chase -- take photos of everything else! I'm not sure what this sign was about -- this reminds me a bit of the "Hoof and Mouth" warning signs you see in the U.K.

This corn silo looked quite nice -- and was a good test to see how well it would look in an HDR. The flare off of my new lens (the Tokina 11-16) is not too pretty, IMO.

The light from the silo illuminated the corn in the foreground.

This storm was tornado warned as I shot this photo (just on the eastern outskirts of Kearney, Nebraska). Not sure why -- it looked half way interesting on radar, (with the classic mini supercell shape), but there wasn't much going on with the base of it, at least so far as I could see from the illuminated lights of Kearney.

Midway

2011-09-06T16:28:00.001-05:00

This was shot over the course of two days at the 2011 Nebraska State Fair. There is something uniquely bizarre and exciting about the atmosphere at a fair midway, especially after dark. This is my first real attempt at shooting time lapse.

Technical details: This was shot with a Canon 20D capturing stills with an intervalometer; nearly 5000 photographs were required to make this video. It was primarily shot with a Tokina 11-16, but one of the shots was shot with a Canon nifty 50 1.8. The time compression is one second of video time = one minute real time. The fun thing about shooting this as stills is that the available resolution is technically near 4K, meaning it'd look as good on the silver screen as it does on Youtube. :) "I dunno" by grapes ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626 is licensed under a Creative Commons license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Skywave

2011-08-28T19:45:00.005-05:00

I've been playing around with learning timelapse -- I still have a lot to learn. This was more a test of the equipment than an attempt at a good storm timelapse, though given that this was a pretty boring popcorn summer storm and that the camera still caught a cool rolling sky wave, I'm pretty excited. This was shot near Kearney, Nebraska.

Shot this with a Canon 50 using a Tokina 11-16 in sRAW1 mode. Exported to JPEGS in Adobe Camera RAW, then ran the JPEGS through VirtualDub with the MSU DeFlicker plugin, then loaded the resulting JPEGS into Photoshop to create the video. Surprisingly time consuming process.

Petapixel interview

2011-08-16T17:34:00.004-05:00

Sweet -- Petapixel, a blog that I follow, recently ran an interview with me. If you've ever wondered about where to go to learn more about shooting storm photos, give it a read!

Photo by Lanette Epps; used with permission

August Arcus Extravaganza!

2011-08-12T12:53:00.005-05:00

I was lucky enough to catch an absolutely STUNNING arcus cloud this past Sunday just north of Kearney, Nebraska. The incredible appearance of this storm is a combination of great storm structure and perfect lighting, with the sun setting behind the storm and blasting it with an orange glow. Storms like these in August are one of the reasons I love living in Nebraska.

These kinds of storms only very rarely produce tornadoes -- the primary threat these post are high winds (though not with this storm), hail, and catching flies in your mouth because your jaw has become unhinged for too long.

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR A MUCH LARGER VERSION.

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR A MUCH LARGER VERSION.

May 19 Chase Bust

2011-07-18T12:51:00.004-05:00

May 19 was unfortunately a chase bust in southern Kansas. Parameters looked pretty darn good that day, and a huge field of congested cumulus formed late in the day that got my hopes up, but in the end storms never evolved into the supercells I'd expected. What do storm chasers do on days when nothing happens? Take pictures of the best nothing they can find! :)

The turkey towers that refused to become supercells. Slackers!

I've found my next chase vehicle!

(There are very few restaurants who cook better than my wife.)

May 12, 2011 Cold Core Chase in Nebraska (Or: Look, the TIV Again!)

2011-07-15T12:05:00.009-05:00

May 12 was a bit of a backyard chase, with me stupidly heading late out the door for a storm north of Kearney that, had I left 30 minutes earlier, would have probably netted some nice photos. As it was, I ended up on a dirt road trying to get ahead of it; by time I did, it had farted out plume of cold air, which is a storm's way of saying "I'm done making tornadoes!".

But there were still chances to the east, ahead of the advancing line of cold air, so east I went. That's where I ran into the TIV crew. It's almost comical how often I randomly bumped into them this year, but I'm not complaining -- photos of them in the field are actually something that school textbooks like to buy, and the TIV production company ended up using a bunch of pictures, too, to promote the IMAX movie. These days, Sean Casey is shooting with a couple of 2K digital stereo cameras -- i.e., he's now shooting 3D. No idea what his current project is, but I'm pretty sure it involves tornadoes. :)

I spent the rest of the day tailing them and shooting them in action, since the storms were not (in my opinion) terribly promising.

Click the above image to view it much larger.

Playing a game of "catch the hail".

May 11, 2011 Chase in Northwest Kansas

2011-07-14T12:39:00.004-05:00

Finally! All this year's chase images (barring any surprise chases later this summer) are processed, registered at the copyright office, and ready to be shared. 2011 wasn't quite as exciting of a chase year for me as the past couple of years, partly because I was out chasing by myself instead of tagging along with a massive group of history-making scientists, and partly because I stepped up to the plate and swung a big strikeout on the biggest day of the year in Oklahoma. Still, photographically anyhow, it was a very interesting year, especially the images I shot in Joplin, Missouri, which was a city that evoked both heartbreak and awe.

However, today's post is about a chase in Northwest Kansas on May 11. This was a bit of a chase bust day -- not because of bad choices, but because the atmosphere didn't do what it was forecast to do. When chasing, chasers tend to be a pessimistic bunch, always looking for the "fly in the ointment", so to speak -- the one ingredient that might kill the storm potential on an otherwise good day. This day, the fly was storms that fired in Texas early in the morning. You might wonder how storms firing in Texas could possibly affect storm chances in Kansas, but it does -- the storms soaked up and rained out a good deal of the moisture that was on it's way to Kansas, and the wispy anvils of the storms blown off high in the sky were transported north into Kansas, reflecting back into space much of the sunlight that would have heated the ground and sparked off storms.

So I took what I could get. What I got was a bizarre (for me) anticyclonic storm near Colby, Kansas, moving west-northwest. This is odd because most storms spin cyclonically (anticlockwise in North America), whereas this was spinning anticyclonically (clockwise)... and because most storms more west to east or north to south or south to north, but rarely east to west.

I ran into the Discovery Channel teams (Tim Samaras and Reed Timmer); I was only able to get shots of Reed's group. Wasn't a whole lot for them to see this day, though I was impressed that Reed went chasing after an area of anticyclonic rotation. His crew is a tenacious lot, and that tenacity pays off from time to time on storms that other abandon.

Click the above image for a much larger version

A monster lurks in the dark...

2011-06-28T14:20:00.001-05:00

This was hard to get a shot of, but man -- what a beautifully structured supercell, just west of Campbell, Nebraska, June 19, 2011. Can't imagine how cool it would have looked during the day. This is a storm that formed all the west near McCook, Nebraska, and just refused to die until after midnight.

Car wrapped around a pole

2011-05-28T23:03:00.001-05:00

A car wrapped around a pole in Joplin, Missouri, after an EF-5 tornado tore through town.

Semi truck wrapped around a debarked tree

2011-05-28T10:16:00.002-05:00

This is a video of one of the weirdest and most mind-boggling things I saw while photographing Joplin's tornado aftermath. I literally had to sit down for a couple of minutes and stare at it to try to wrap my brain around it. This truck originated from a parking lot over a hundred yards away -- it was carried here, then wrapped around this tree, which was subsequently debarked.

Joplin, May 25, 2011

2011-05-27T22:58:00.001-05:00

CLICK THE ABOVE PHOTO FOR A MUCH LARGER VERSION

This panorama was shot in Joplin Missouri, May 25, 2011. It was shot from the kitchen of a home destroyed by the tornado. I spoke to the owner of the home for a while -- his family took shelter in their basement and all of them survived. He said that he knew the tornado was going to hit them directly when their ears began popping and the HVAC ducts in the basement suddenly began crushing inwards as if they were soda cans. Despite searching a several block radius, the homeowner has yet to find his car, which was parked in front of the house before the tornado.

Sorry this isn't a perfectly stitched pano -- didn't have time to mess with a tripod.

Joplin

2011-05-27T00:42:00.003-05:00

On May 25th, I spent around 7 hours walking around the disaster area of Joplin, Missouri. The scene there can be described as heartbreaking -- but I'm really not sure that any words or pictures could give an accurate sense of just how mindboggling the destruction is. I mean that literally -- there were times when I just had to sit down and try to let my brain process what I was seeing. Imagine standing atop a hill and looking into the distance and seeing nothing but miles upon miles of utter devastation, with cars strewn everywhere across a landscape of debarked trees.

While my primary focus was on taking still photographs, I used my iPhone to shoot the occasional video. (Please excuse the poor production quality -- I am not a videographer, and the iPhone is not a good video camera). Neither video nor photographs can come close to rendering the heartbreaking reality of the devastation. All the same, I'll try to post a few over the next few days, followed by some still photographs.

Trifecta

2011-05-13T12:00:00.005-05:00

Been chasing the past couple of days -- on Wednesday in northwestern Kansas and on Thursday in central and southeastern Nebraska. I think I should get some kind of free hat for pulling a Discovery Channel Storm Chasers trifecta, as I ran into and photographed Samaras and Timmer on Wednesday and then bumped into and photographed Sean Casey and crew on Thursday. The storms may not have been too exciting, but at least I had something interesting to photograph.

Anyhow, Sean is out and about shooting with 3D digital cameras -- no idea what his current project is, but I imagine it has something to do with storm chasing and tornadoes. ;) I don't usually shoot video, but I did manage to shoot these two clips of Sean and his crew filming a storm in southeast nebraska. Pardon the terrible wind noise and the camera jitter -- this was shot with an iPhone. (You can tell how little I do video -- I don't even own a real video camera).

Zot!

2011-04-26T11:52:00.004-05:00

Today's shot is from June 19, 2010 near Jewell, Kansas. Spent most of the time trying to catch up to this storm on a gravel road that turned into a dirt road that turned into a road through a farm field with tall grass growing up in the middle of it -- missed the tornado and everything. Here's a shot of a bit of lightning. Looking north you can see an RFD cut and something trying to get together, but it never really did. Chaser Darren Addy is the guy out in the field with his Pentax.

Purple Rain

2011-04-23T23:53:00.001-05:00

Hello, arcus cloud! Today's photo is of the leading edge of a rather dramatic squall line roaring through central Kansas, May 26, 2006. I think most chasers avoid squalls because they find them boring, but when they get worked up real well like this one, I love them; they're some of the most visually striking stuff out there and relatively easy to reposition on. Not sure why the rain came out purple -- I suspect it's a mixture of the rainshaft / hailshaft colors and the colors of the setting sun.

Blue Thunder

2011-04-01T22:28:00.000-05:00

Today's photo is from June 19th of last year. This isn't the storm that put down the tornado that day near Jewell, Kansas, but is rather a developing little bit of convective nothing I ran into while I was driving back north to get home. Thing is, at dusk, just about any storm with any kind of electrical display can look pretty cool to a camera! :)

Kearney Tornado

2011-03-28T11:23:00.002-05:00

Today's photo is a shot that seems to have found it's way into a billion email forwards all over the internet. This is a shot of the business end of a tornadoic supercell, May 29, 2008, just as it exits Kearney, Nebraska. A tornado is probably ongoing during this picture, as the storm did EF-2 damage to Kearney (and later EF-2 damage to Aurora, Nebraska).

This was a storm I made a stupid mistake on, driving (intentionally) underneath the main circulation on the interstate about 3 miles before Kearney, thinking I could beat it before it dropped. It's no fun emerging from the INSIDE of wrapping rain curtains after driving through very strong winds that switch from northerly to westerly to southerly.

Ground Scraper

2011-03-26T16:28:00.001-05:00

Today's photo is of a supercell (yes, believe it or not that linear thing is a supercell!) in the Oklahoma panhandle, June 13, 2010. You can see from water that there is lots of flooding in low-lying areas. Ashamed to say that the Vortex 2 team rarely abided by the saying "Turn Around, Don't Drown" -- don't know how many times I had to get my Impala up to ramming speeds on gravel roads to plow through two foot deep washouts. Definitely made me see the utility of sport utilities!

This storm later went on to produce a couple of tornadoes near Slapout, Oklahoma.

I've reduced my print prices

2011-03-25T18:25:00.003-05:00

Ever wanted a photographic print or a stretched canvas of one of my shots? I'm trying an experiment for a month or so -- I'm reducing my prices rather dramatically. I made the occasional print sale at the old pricing scheme, but it generally formed a rather small slice of my photographic income (the majority coming from licensing deals with advertising, media, and educational clients). Hopefully at the new price points, I'll end up getting more prints into the hands of fans of my photography. :)

I've also added a large number of photos to the available pool of fine art images to purchase. Interested?

Check out my store!

To purchase a print, just select which one you are interested in, click "Buy/Download", and select your print or canvas size.

If you have any questions, just shoot me an email, or leave a comment here. Enjoy!

(BTW, the photo above is from northern Kansas on June 20 of last year -- it's a world-eating squall line plowing its way across the prairie).

Vortex 2 Probe Unit in Colorado

2011-03-24T13:11:00.000-05:00

Click the above image to view it much larger.

A panoramic stitch of a Vortex 2 probe team near Agate, Colorado, June 11, 2010. This photo is comprised of around 12 images stitched together in Photoshop CS5. The original of this image is over 15,000 pixels wide.

DOW and a wall cloud

2011-03-18T10:35:00.000-05:00

Storm chasers with Project Vortex 2 watch a distant wall cloud and supercell in Goshen County, Wyoming, June 5, 2009. The truck at left is the Doppler on Wheels truck. Project Vortex 2 is a two year National Science Foundation and NOAA funded science mission to study tornadoes and supercell thunderstorms.

This photo will be included with the official press pack for the IMAX film "Tornado Alley".

Oklahoma Windmill

2011-03-17T11:33:00.003-05:00

This photo makes me think of Kansas, even though it was shot in northern Oklahoma, May 12, 2010. This was a chase I wasn't really trying to be on; I was on my way back home from covering Vortex 2 in Oklahoma (my wife had a surgery scheduled the next day) and left too late in the day -- and managed to be literally right in front of initiation. Ran into David Drummond that day -- he went on to see a tornado, I think; I waited for a gap in the storms and drove through it.

This photo will be included with the IMAX film "Tornado Alley" press kit.

Pink Supercell

2011-03-11T14:15:00.003-06:00

This is a shot of a high-based supercell that, against all odds, kept trying to work its way down to the ground in central Kansas, April 23, 2006. Ran into Amos Magliocco on this storm and we all stood in a field, watching nothing become something. By sunset, this was a magnificently beautiful storm.

This image will be included with the official press kit for the IMAX movie "Tornado Alley".

One of my favorites

2011-03-10T12:38:00.002-06:00

This is a shot of a former supercell turned squall line in Kansas on May 26, 2006. This storm was a good lesson in how accelerating gust fronts are hard to outrun -- it took us a good half an hour to get in front of this thing as it accelerated from 25mph to nearly 60. Finding this barn was serendipity. It's one of my favorites; I use it as my main website opener image.

This shot will be included in the Tornado Alley IMAX press kit.