Late September-November storm photography/blog catch-up

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

Here's a quick summary of subjects and events from the past couple of months:

Winter driving / icy road educational videos

All of my spare time outside of work since mid-October has been consumed with the production of these three educational/awareness videos on winter driving and icy roads. These links go to Youtube:

Video: How to correct a slide on an icy road (and how to prevent them)

Video: Icy Bridges: Weather's underrated killer

UP 844's return to the rails through St. Louis

Union Pacific's steam locomotive #844 recently underwent a lengthy overhaul, and in October made its first major trip since the work was completed. The run to Memphis took it through St. Louis in mid-October, and I took the day off to go capture some video. I recently upgraded to a 4K video workflow, and this was the new camera's first shoot.

VIDEO: UP 844 through St. Louis, October 2016

September 29 West Virginia supercell

A work trip coincided with this marginal supercell environment in my old home state. I headed down to Beckley to observe a surprisingly well-structured storm moving up from the south:

The storm was conveniently tracking along Route 19, which I used to stay just ahead of it. This was the view at Oak Hill:

After this, I hurried up to the New River Gorge and scrambled down the long stairway to the bridge overlook to hopefully get the rare supercell-New River Bridge combo shot. Alas, the storm rapidly weakened before arriving at the Gorge:

October 12 St. Louis thunderstorms

A trip downtown for some very weak convection moving through the metro area. No photos or videos captured.

November 3 St. Louis thunderstorms

Summer-like weather persisted well into the fall, including a few rounds of thunderstorms and severe weather. These nighttime storms rolled through the metro on the 3rd. Even the mosquitoes were still out in force this night! This video was also shot in 4K.

VIDEO: November 3 St. Louis thunderstorms at the Arch

With the capture of that video, I now have footage of lightning with the Gateway Arch in every month of the year, testifying to the year-round-ness of St. Louis' storm season. I put together this compilation of these videos here:

VIDEO: The Year-Round Storm Season at the Gateway Arch

November 18 southern Illinois storms

A trip to Grayville, Illinois via Highway 50 through Centralia and down to I-64 for a marginal severe weather envorinment. No photos or videos captured.