Roane County Lightning: Wallback, WV, April 10, 2001 - 7:00 PM
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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. |
Only April 10, and four storm chase days already.
I was still tired after only 4 hours of sleep the night before, thanks to lightning near Ripley on Monday night. But when I saw this cell at 6:15pm, just beginning to form and spit out bright cloud-to-ground strikes just northeast of Dunbar, I couldn't resist. This storm was one of a small line of cells moving rapidly east-northeast across central West Virginia. In fact, everything was moving so fast that I had to drive all the way to Wallback, near the Roane-Clay County line along Interstate 79, to finally catch up with the storm's electrically active area.
 I broke through an area of heavy rain just south of the Wallback exit, and was immediately greeted by several bright CG flashes just to the west- which prompted me to exit the Interstate and set up under the overpass facing northeast (center of circle in the radar image at right).
As I set up the 35mm camera, my new one-year-old mini-tripod decided to give out. A crack in its head finally opened up, leaving only a small sliver of plastic to hold the camera steady. I really thought that thing should have lasted longer than a year. Nonetheless, I was able to shoot several frames with the crippled tripod, and I may have caught one or two of the flashes in the videos at right.
Video: Panasonic VHS-C Palmcorder PV-L857 |
