Storm Highway by Dan Robinson
Weather, photography and the open roadClick for an important message
Storm Highway by Dan RobinsonClick for an important message
Home | Blog Index | Blog Archives | Christianity & Faith Essays

                   Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - 10:51AM CDT

July 10 St. Louis morning tower and Arch lightning

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer
30 Years of Storm Photography
Important Message
Dan's RSS/XML feed
Dan's YouTube Video Channel

HD EXPEDITION VIDEO: Lightning behind the Arch and striking the KSDK tower

Thankfully, Tuesday's expedition setup in Iowa/northern Illinois busted very early. It did so at 5AM in fact, when I awoke and checked the radar to see a mess of rain and storms that spelled the end for any meaningful potential there. As a result, I spent the day at home hammering out some items on the to-do list, as well as taking a long nap in preparation for overnight storms in St. Louis.

That sleep was definitely needed, as I left home at 3AM when storms began firing just north and west of the metro area. Since these would not be moving into downtown for a couple of hours, I drove out to Wentzville to meet them. I spent a lot of time looking for interesting foregrounds, thereby missing a lot of the action. I only set up briefly for this distant storm throwing clear-air bolts:

Storms began firing all around the metro, so I headed back into the city. An electrified stratiform area was over the area inside of 270/255, which favored upward lightning at the towers in Shrewsbury. With no storm cores due at downtown for a while, I had time to capture these three hits to the KSDK TV tower in the cluster (a fourth occured before I set up the cameras). This first shot is a 3-frame stack:

The individual frames:

Finally, a storm core was about 20 minutes out from downtown, so I headed back to the Arch vantage point. This storm never made it, however. I captured video of a few nice anvil crawlers from the complex as it moved to the east (these images link to the video).

30 Years of Storm Photography
Important Message
Dan's YouTube Video Channel
Dan's Twitter feed
Dan's RSS/XML feed

GO: Home | Storm Expeditions | Photography | Extreme Weather Library | Stock Footage | Blog

Featured Weather Library Article:

Lightning FAQ
Everything you ever wanted to know about lightning!
More Library Articles

All content © Dan Robinson. All usage requires a paid license - please contact Dan for inquiries.

Web Site Design and Internet Marketing by CIS Internet