Storm Highway by Dan Robinson
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                   Thursday, September 11, 2014 5:30AM CST

More late summer storms in the St. Louis metro

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer
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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.

Tuesday the 9th brought yet another barrage of close lightning over downtown St. Louis, but no strikes to the Arch. There was one hit at the west end of the Eads Bridge (or possibly to one of the buildings at Laclede's Landing) very close to where I was shooting video, with instantaneous thunder. I had the camera set up on my typical close framing of the Arch, so didn't capture it. This was the only lightning image I captured from this event - the bolt is passing behind the Arch here (not hitting it):

Lightning behind the Gateway Arch
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That image, by the way, is courtesy of my old video camera. I was finally able to get it working after having the necessary part overnight-shipped (in case you were wondering after the last chase account).

Wednesday brought the 'main event' as the cold front finally swept through. The pre-frontal environment was slightly conducive for supercells. A few storms north of the metro area in Illinois briefly attained minimal supercell structures. These phases were very transient and too short-lived to purposely intercept, but I managed to be at the right place at the right time to capture one such interval near Hamel. This outflowish storm rapidly transitioned with a quickly-lowering updraft base, strong inflow and rapidly rising scud tags into a developing wall cloud. The storm displayed a hook structure on radar at this time.

Storm near Hamel
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As with the others, this phase was short-lived - the storm went back to being completely outflow-dominant after only 5 minutes. I then left this scene to get back downtown for the final round of storms on the cold front. These were generally weak and disorganized as they passed over the city:

Storm over St. Louis
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