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!