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Friday, May 8, 2009 - 9:14PM

Close-up tower lightning, May 8

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

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.

HD EXPEDITION VIDEO: 5 upward lightning discharges, close-up view

The big hybrid derecho/MCV/flash flood mega-storm hit the Appalachians this evening and got shredded to bits. For me, that left only the close-up tower lightning play. The system was collapsing fast, and even the lightning barely made it into the state before vanishing entirely. Not before hitting the WVAH tower a total of 9 times though, 4 of which I missed while driving up to the Coal Mountain site. Most of the flashes were single return strokes, only one did I manage to catch a still of one full stroke. The clip above shows the five hits I did manage to get.

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I got one nice bead-out shot, this is the beading stage of the stroke shown above:

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Closer crop - the glowing particles near the tower tip are 'arc welded' shards of metal drifting away. The rest of the glowing areas are the decaying lightning channel.