These are images of lightning striking the WVAH television tower near St. Albans, WV on April 17, 2006 captured with two cameras, one with a telephoto lens for extreme close-up imagery. Visible in the video are the following features:
Molten metal - Glowing shards of molten metal arc-welded off of the antenna tip, seen drifting downwind like a fireworks burst.
Lightning channel 'bead out', lightning channel breaks up into segmented beads as it decays.
Channel drift - lightning channel moves along with the ambient wind direction
Soft thunder - these three lightning discharges were of relatively weak intensity, and coupled with the typical slow current 'ramp-up' common with upward-moving lightning, exhibited very quiet, soft thunder (as opposed to the usual sudden explosive burst of current seen with most lightning discharges).
My work is, at this very moment you are reading this, generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I was forced to shut down the professional side of my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.
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From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
Before continuing, check each box to agree to and acknowledge these two statements:
Click this button to finalize this acknowledgement:
This chase was a routine television assignment in my role as a cameraman. As a result, many of these don't have a dedicated chase log.
This chase was only recorded in my mileage reports, no detailed log was written for it.
