Well I came home from work early to fix my PC which i had broken the night before. I knew there was a slight risk on that day but wasn't too focused on it till I noticed a promising sign outside my window.

Cumulonimbus. If you're ever doing anything outdoors and see these coming in your general direction, chances are you're going to get rained on and possibly more.

Developing out to the west of me, a good sign storms are moving in.

Although at this point I wasn't planning on venturing out. I figured I'd sit at home and track them on my GR3 software. I noticed a particular storm about 10 miles off to my NW producing 2.00" hail, so I thought...I can catch this one...and off I went.

Needless to say the hail was only pea size when I caught it,  but the wind was nuts, saw allot of downed trees on cars and houses, reported it to NOAA [my first submission as an e-spotter.]

While I was out the storms just kept firing, I wasn't too surprised considering MLCAPES were over 3000! On the way home was one of the most spectacular lightning shows I've seen in awhile. I wish I had my canon 20-D camera [which I'm currently saving for] I could have gotten a really good chance to practice taking real pictures at far better quality.

Of course this is just candy compared to the real action that occurs elsewhere in the country.  Mark my words though, Ill be out there sooner than later and its good to get some practice in now.

Here are  some video stills of the lightning.

This bolt was actually striking a power transformer

Whether you're impressed or not, I was disappointed when I saw the footage, because this is about 10 percent of what I saw/ thought I caught within the frame of my camera, proving once again lightning isn't as easy to film as one would think. Living in the city with poor visibility and owning only a Sony Handycam doesn't help either.

 

Here is the video. It starts out with a very ghetto time lapse of the clouds I have pictured above. The video then moves into where I caught up to the hail, u can hear it hitting the van, and at the 2nd red light I come to is when the high winds kicked in, estimated around 50mph.

 

If the video doesn't show up, try clicking the link that says myspace. [Earlier videos of mine were hosted there.]