July-August 2026 Storm Chasing Recap

These thunderstorms flickering with visible lightning in the distance moved north of Pittsburgh at sunset as the (illegal) fireworks dotted the landscape, viewed via drone at 400 feet in Washington:

As the outflow marched southeast toward Washington, a few bolts appeared to the northwest:

A decent shelf cloud moved overhead with the outflow as it arrived, with a few bolts in the background:

Storms fired in the Pittsburgh area again on the 4th. These drone views show several storms surrounding Washington as an advancing outflow triggered new storms around town during the late afternoon:

This storm's rain shaft advanced over downtown Washington, PA early in the afternoon as storms developed in southwestern Pennsylvania for the third straight day. The cloud-to-ground lightning was uncooperative before the rain arrived and ended this drone observation:

A short outing before midnight to shoot distant lightning about 30 miles south of New Baden with the 50mm lens. These storms were down near Sparta. The traffic streaks are on I-64.

Another day of summertime pop-up thunderstorms around the St. Louis metro, the type that typically isn't worth doing much with chase-wise unless they're right overhead. Several of these cells developed around town and produced random bursts of lightning. I captured a couple of high-speed sequences of negative CGs.

These storms developed south of the metro area at 10pm. I drove the 20 miles down to Darmstadt to see if the lightning was worth shooting. The storms were uncooperative, with the best lightning occuring behind low stratus clouds, during wind-blown rain, in poor road options and/or in the midst of tall corn. I only captured a single still shot with a visible lightning channel just before these developing low clouds blocked the entire sky:

This day featured multiple rounds of storms that were mostly fruitless in terms of imagery and video. The initial storms of interest were a supercell cluster that spun up a potent-looking mesocyclone down near Sparta. I got a late start leaving, and the precip core cut me off on Highway 4 south of Mascoutah. The tiered shelf cloud on the north side of the cores featured Kelvin-Helmholz waves:

I arrived on the storm south of Coulterville, finding nothing but a long gust front out ahead of the faded circulation. Meanwhile, a potent bow echo had just passed through Columbia, Missouri and was racing toward St. Louis. I decided this would be the better play, so I turned around and scurried back north. On the way, new storms went up everywhere in the metro area ahead of the bowing line, eliminating any hope of a nice shelf cloud over the city.

I went downtown anyway to see if anything would materialize. The gust front from the original bow echo was buried in these new storms, which themselves were heavy-rain producers with mostly in-cloud lightning. There were relatively few cloud-to-ground bolts, desipite what data was showing. One of the few CGs I saw was this intense beading bolt that hit close to I-64 in Fairview Heights on my way into the city:

The situation in the city was so devoid of anything photogenic that I didn't even go to my normal setup spots, I just circled through downtown and got right back on the highway eastbound.

New backbuilding convection was continually developing on the western flank of the complex, but this also wasn't producing much in the way of cooperative photogenic lightning. I decided I was done with everything at 9:30.

At close to midnight, I went back out to take another look at things. An electrified stratiform region had developed in eastern Illinois into Indiana, and skies overhead were clear. Such a sprite opportunity in the Midwest in mid-summer is almost unheard of, so I set up for this and fired off about 70 frames looking east. No sprites occurred over the stratiform region, which was slowly losing its strength. Eventually, it stopped producing lightning altogether.

Meanhile, the backbuilding convection had continued to the south of the metro area and was actually extending in a line all the way back toward Springfield, Missouri. Another new cluster of cells had also developed west of St. Louis. All of these cumulonimbi were flickering with frequent lightning in the distant south, southwest and west. There were no bolts-from-the-blue, though. I was more interested in the sprite opportunity, so I didn't turn the camera on any of the distant storms.

Once it was apparent the sprites hope was busting, I decided to try for a few frames on the approaching western cells. This year is one where the crop in the vast majority of the Midwestern fields is corn - as in 9 out of 10 fields. Typically, less than half of the fields are corn. Usually, they are on a four-year cycle of corn, soybeans, winter wheat and an off-year (usually with wildflowers) to recover. Most years, you'll have plenty of soybean, winter wheat and wildflower fields to view storms. I don't know why everything is corn this year, but it sure is making storm chasing difficult this summer. I had to drive 5 miles nearly to Summerfield to find a clear view to the northwest. By then, the incoming storms were dying. There was only one final intracloud flash after I got set up:

An unusually-positioned rainbow appeared above a cumulus congestus over Mascoutah thanks to the adjacent lingering precip from another recently-dissipated updraft:

This marginal setup - on the back side of an MCV - managed to produce a fully-condensed tornado down near Valmeyer. I never would have seen that coming, and would have missed it even if it had been right out of my back door. Such is the Midwest's tornado activity sometimes!

Dewpoints ranged from 81°F to 86°F in the St. Louis metro area this day, with at least the Lambert Airport weather station recording an all-time record high dewpoint of 81°F. I measured an 85°F dewpoint outside of New Baden with my handheld Kestrel (the camera lens was fogging instantly after being in the air-conditioned car):

The aforementioned record-high dewpoints resulted in 7,500 j/kg of surface-based CAPE (instability) east of St. Louis. A differential heating boundary and a good stream of upper support overhead meant that supercells were possible along the boundary, which was draped from roughly Decatur down to Evansville, Indiana. Storms fired along I-70 west of Effingham and coalesced into what appeared to be an incipient supercell, and I drove east on Highway 50 to intercept it.

By the time I reached the storm south of Kinmundy, it had already developed a forward flank outflow surge that raced far ahead. This dashed any supercell or tornado prospects for the day. However, the storm was rather cooperative with a few good save-worthy captures.

This conical rain shaft is another good example to add to the "tornado look-alike" collection, even a clear slot-like feature is visible:

The storm then proceeded to produce a nice lightning barrage, during which a rainbow appeared. Two of the best bolts were framed just right on the high speed camera capture at 6,002fps. These are actually two of my favorite captures in recent years, just great scenery, color, lighting and very crisp and interesting bolts:

The lightning eventually tailed off, but a dense rain shaft and rainbow remained to produce this scene:

I broke away from this cell at Highway 50 and went west then south to intercept some new convection going up on the first storm's outflow. This dramatic pileus cap appeared over downtown Salem:

I ended the chase at Mount Vernon and headed home in case the models were correct about new storms after sunset in the St. Louis metro area. These storms never developed. The boundary to the east continued to produce storms throughout the overnight hours, but overcast ruled out any sprite visibility and I could not see any distant lightning worth staying out and shooting. These storms ended up producing a westward-moving outflow that reached St. Louis around 2AM, cooling things off to the point I was able to get a 23-mile bike ride in.

This was a low-effort, low-expectations chase that resulted in a low-quality barely-tornado. It's never good having to add so many qualifiers and explain why this is a tornado, but that's chasing sometimes.

I drove to Fenton early in the day and waited on a target to emerge. It seemed like early storms along a convergence zone around Columbia were going to be the first potential tornado producers, but I really didn't feel like going all the way up there (the I-70 widening construction is really bad right now) and it looked like there might be a chaser horde up there already. I also wanted something closer to the metro area. Winds were backed nicely down here, and clearing had allowed the air to recover behind the early-day rain. Finally, convection began firing north of Rolla far ahead of everything else, heading for the Union/St. Clair area. This eventually developed a hook echo and a low-level meso. That was just what I was looking for: something decent down here all to myself.

I arrived on this first storm south of Owensville right as it completely dried up. The instability drop-off here was fairly abrupt, and I was concerned that every storm would be doing this. New storms developed just behind the first, but these were not only maintaining, but intensifying further. The second cell began producing frequent lightning and had a healthy look on radar. I arrived on this along Highway 19 at Oak Hill, about halfway between Owensville and Cuba.

This part of Missouri is pretty much a drone-only storm observation zone. I don't think I would have even tried chasing here this day if I didn't have my aerial vantage point available. I definitely wasn't finding any ground-based views of these storms where I was. I launched at the intersection of 19 and Highway C to find a healthy-looking updraft base just to the west:

The velocity couplet on radar was not very impressive, but the storm's visual apperance was progressing in classic fashion: cascading downward motion on a surging RFD wrapping around a meso to the southwest. Condensation tendrils began rising from the ground under the meso:

This condensation wasn't a vortex, rather the outer edge of a tornado circulation akin to what you see with a condensing collar cloud. A distinct circulation can be seen to the right of this, with the cloud fragments moving in opposite directions. The low-level air here was close to saturation, and you can see in the video (linked below) that there were multiple non-tornadic areas of fog rising off of the treetops in the surrounding area. The motion is the key here. This becomes clearest when the camera zooms out: you can see the classic bowl funnel above rotating strongly:

Here's the video:

The storm underwent a few more cycles with strongly-rotating wall clouds, this one just north of Cuba being the most impressive of the day:

I made one more flight at Bourbon to watch this storm move across I-44, but didn't observe anything else of note. A potent squall line to the northwest was racing toward these cells and looked to overtake them, and I didn't have a good way to get back out ahead on the curvy 2-lane roads away from the interstate. I decided to switch to lightning mode at St. Clair and see if any visible channels of the frequent flashes would start revealing themselves. I saw a few nice bolts in the distance south of I-44, but low clouds blocked most of the view. I called the chase at sunset and began heading home.

A stratiform region developed over the St. Louis metro, connected to the leading cores. This started producing horizontally-extensive lightning flashes over the city with upward lightning potential, but again, low clouds blocked most of it. I didn't think it was worth staying out any longer, arriving home at 9:30pm.

I headed to Brentwood to shoot upward lightning with thunderstorms moving through the city at daybreak. This beading positive CG hit right after I'd set up the 4k camera and 30 seconds before I was rolling on the high speed cam:

Only one upward flash occurred to the towers. The high speed shot was not very interesting (single-channel fast positive leaders with weak branching and no return strokes), but I saved it anyway. The 4k cam got the better exposure:

I went up to Chicago after work on Monday night to set up for these storms on Tuesday morning. A hole deveoped in the stratiform region over the city just behind the leading cores of the storms, eliminating the potential for upward flashes for most of the event. Only one upward flash occurred to the buildings after a tiny active lobe of the stratiform shield moved across the north side of the city. This was a single slow positive strike to the Hancock with numerous return strokes:

The 6,002 fps shot of this showed a few interesting features, with dart leader-initiated return strokes originating on multiple branches. Some of the dart leaders featured short propagations back up another branch, something I hadn't seen before:

Here's the video:

Outflow from overnight storms moved uneventfully through the St. Louis metro at midday. This boundary stalled a couple of counties south of I-64, becoming the focus for new storms by the late afternoon. I went down to Sparta to intercept the first storms to go up along the river. These briefly had a supercellular look, but quickly became outflow dominant. Outflow raced ahead of this storm east of Sparta.

North of Cutler, the winds kicked up thick clouds of coal dust at the Knighthawk Prairie Eagle coal mine. The terrain and corn made good views sparse, but I managed a 6,002 fps high speed shot of a bolt behind this scene:

These storms sent a strong outflow surge northward. Meanwhile, storms northwest of St. Louis had produced a new outflow that was racing south. The two outflows would collide somewhere around Waterloo to Red Bud, so I headed over there to await the collision-triggered storms. These happened as expected, but once again, I could not find a clear view among the fields when the best bolts were in progress (again, this year it seems that more than 90 percent of the fields are corn). I decided to not follow these southward. I arrived home at 6:30pm.

The sunset then peeked under the anvils of the storms to the south, with some cumulus to the west producing crepuscular rays. I walked across the street for this view:

After work, I was greeted by these new storms that continually developed across the metro area after midnight, mainly on the Illinois side. I set up to do an old-school "stills-only" lightning photography session near Mascoutah for over an hour. Most of the visible bolts were on the south side of the cores, making them elusive until a new cell went up to my due west over Fairview Heights. This new storm produced a couple of nice clear-air bolts over Belleville before the rain arrived:

Earlier, all of the storms had been remaining to the south, with most bolts deep in the cores or on the other side of them. A few times, bolts would peek out around the dense rain shafts:

I took my camera with me on this night's bike ride in case sprite viewing conditions materialized from ongoing storms in northern Illinois. About an hour into the ride east of New Baden, radar showed a stratiform region had developed in northeastern Illinois. I set up the camera and fired off exposures over this area for about 20 minutes. A single sprite occurred during this interval: