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Wednesday, July 18, 2007 - 6:21PM

Central North Carolina storms

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

The RUC model was suprisingly dead-on in its prediction of storms in central and northeastern North Carolina on Tuesday. The trigger was a combination of outflow boundaries at the surface and an upper-air disturbance to add lift support. The result was nearly continuous thunderstorms over the Raleigh metro from 8:00PM until nearly 2:00AM. As far as photography is concerned, the storms were not very friendly, with the exception of the first cells that passed over downtown. I could not find a clear spot to set up the cameras as I approached the storms along I-40 at Jones Sausage Road. I ended up spending most of the evening at the tall towers along Highway 70 near Clayton. There were a few hits, but all enshrouded in rain and/or low clouds. The lightning was pretty intense, but for the most part inside of a rainy mess.

Here is the first view of storms to the southeast of Raleigh around 7:30PM. These were about 50-70 miles distant and moving away, which provided a spectacular view of a textbook thunderstorms, with anvils and all.

Thunderstorms about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh.

My brother Matt did much better with the storms in downtown Raleigh, catching a few strikes over the skyline as well as the heay rain core enveloping the city - which made it on several national TV networks. Matt's catches can be found at his site at raleighskyline.com.