December 9 lightning in Missouri and Tennessee

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer

12 for 12! Tonight I completed the unprecedented "Lightning photos every month in 2012" streak with these storms in southeast Missouri and northwest Tennessee. I also captured a couple of "lightning and Christmas lights/decorations" compositions, another first! Here are some of the images (click for larger versions). Despite a slight chance for lightning here at home in the St. Louis metro, I chose to maximize the opportunities for success by playing farther south where instability would be greater, down in the Missouri bootheel region.

Click images for larger versions

At first, dense fog across all of southeastern Missouri threatened to obscure the storms above it. That turned out to not be an issue thanks to the storms' winds mixing out the stagnant saturated layer at the surface. This first shot is from near Obion, Tennessee (just north of Dyersburg), just a minute after the fog cleared.

Next was this frequent CG barrage near New Madrid, MO. I sacrificed a couple of good bolts over open fields in order to get some "lightning with Christmas decorations" shots: