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July 8 St. Louis storms and flooding
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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. This page is a detailed account of the biggest threat to my photography and video operation that I had to battle daily to just barely survive, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem facing all of my colleagues as well. |
HD EXPEDITION VIDEO: Storms and flooding in St. Louis
Colliding strong outflow boundaries (one from the west, another from the east) triggered a cluster of severe storms directly over St. Louis on Sunday evening, which barely moved for almost 2 hours. The result was some minor flooding, mainly in the southern neighborhoods. Other than some dramatic clouds over downtown, there wasn't much in the way of photographic opportunities. A section of Lindbergh Boulevard was covered with about 6-7 inches of water from the heavy rains.
Around 8PM, multiple gust fronts moved over downtown from different cells. One of them developed a "shark's tooth" which, to the untrained eye, might have appeared deceptively like a tornado/funnel. The key was that it wasn't rotating or moving much at all - the harmless cloud material simply condensed slowly downward toward the ground. I have seen gust fronts/shelf clouds in West Virginia do this many times, 'scraping' the tops of ridges.
  
I tried for a tower lightning hit off of Lindbergh - though I didn't get that, a well-placed CG was good enough:
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