August 2018 Roundup; upcoming videos

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

Here's a roundup of events covered in August of 2018:

August 10: New Baden, IL lightning

Nighttime storms in downtown St. Louis were unproductive this night, but were more cooperative once I arrived back home. This from near New Baden:

August 16: St. Louis storms

An outing from Valley Park into downtown for storms. No photos or videos captured.

August 17: St. Louis storms

Another trip downtown for storms. No photos or videos captured.

August 20: St. Louis/Southern Illinois storms

A severe weather setup trip this day. After initially starting downtown, I headed down to Sparta, IL and followed storms east to I-57. No photos or videos captured.

August 29: St. Louis morning storms

An early-morning outing for downtown storms. No photos or videos captured.

3D videos: This rare month-plus interval without a blog update is due to two things. First, the weather in the Midwest has been very quiet and non-eventful. Any storm events we've managed have failed to produce anything of major consequence. I have a few minor expedition logs from this period that I'll eventually post in a single-page roundup format. I also did not chase Hurricane Florence, mainly due to the anticipated nighttime landfall and the slow speed allowing for land interactions to weaken it considerably before coming ashore.

That being said, the primary reason for the silent blog is that I have been devoting near 100% of my production time since early July to a series of upcoming Youtube videos on lightning myths, facts and science that will employ detailed 3D modeling. This work is a fairly time-consuming and tedious endeavor thanks to today's photorealistic 3D modeling resolutions. For example, one of my scenes contains over 500 million blades of grass!

I'm finally getting to the point of running some intial test renders, each of which take in excess of an hour *per frame* to complete at 4K resolution. That is the only reason I have some time now to make this blog post while my computer churns away at those. As a sneak preview, here are a couple of test renders of the modeled scenes.

I have two of these videos on about an equal pace for completion soon, with about a dozen more on the drawing board. Stay tuned to either this blog or the Youtube channel for when these are released.