WOW. wow. June 17, 2009 was the most insane day ever. To sum it up I got about 30 of the best storm structure images/tornado images of my life in one day. ( which are going to take me forever to go through) I still can't believe what I saw.
Well a storm fired really early (10am) near the KS border and we decided to go after it, since our target was 40 miles from where the storm was. We approach from the NW, so the base is hidden behind rain, but when it became visible I noticed a huge meso. It was breathtaking structure.
Sat in this spot for maybe 10 minutes watching a rotating wall cloud under the meso, but fearing big hail (3.5" reported at the time) we retreated east. Got to a spot to turn around and take more stills. Now it was just nuts, this whole thing was rotation, the entire updraft base (keep in mind these images are at 10mm, so the storm is way closer than it appears) was rotating.
soon this thing got really close and we screamed south to once again avoid hail, but we eventually lost this storm. Later on we waited for the real show to start out west, after getting on a crap storm near columbus, the storm my friends were on was producing a tornado, but that was 90 miles away, I decided if nothing else, I'll get some good lightning ops. but no, 1o minutes after I get there the thing drops a tornado and I'm in perfect position for structure/tornado images (about 4 miles away at this point i Believe.
It topped the storm from Eariler!!! this little cone took a while to condensate to the ground, but it just sat there moving ESE at 22mph and it was on the ground for 18 minutes! just sat on the side of the highway and watched. It was pretty crazy though and scary with the sirens through Aurora, NE (the tornado almost hit the town).
THen it had a condensation funnel to the ground! and it grew to be a monster, the national weather service said it was 1/4 mile wide at one point.
Then it lifted and the lightning lit twilight meso ops came
Just a day when things went totally nuts. I'm not sure when I'll have the report done, cause I'm still working on images, but by sunday I'm thinking it will be all done (hopefully).