In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down 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.
A "lightningfest" in layman's terms was the result when a stationary boundary lit up with training thunderstorms along the I-70 corridor in southwestern Illinois. The St. Louis area saw at least five rounds of thunderstorms between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, with all of the storms efficient lightning producers. I followed the first round east to Carlyle Lake in the afternoon, encountering a roof blown off of a farm building across the road and having to move some of the pieces to get by (straight line wind damage).
There was also extensive flooding south of Vandalia, mostly fields covered and many areas with water over the roadway. I ended up having to break off of this storm due to the flood hazard. After sunset, new storms repeatedly fired on the boundary with photogenic lightning. These are near Mulberry Grove:
Crop showing ground points:
Taken handheld out of the passenger window on I-70 near Highland:
I headed into St. Louis for new storms moving into the city. For the most part, visible lightning was meager here, but I grabbed a few video clips - one of the most interesting sights was the rain and wind streaming around the Arch ( video clip ).
After midnight, a nice gust front shelf cloud moved over Scott AFB and Mascoutah, IL:
Storms continued through the night and into the morning, when a few close cloud-to-ground strikes woke me up.
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