September-October 2024 Storm Chasing Recap

As I've said before, routine northern lights are sort of a "been there, done that" thing for me these days. Seeing the best of any given aurora event requires staying out for hours, sometimes all night, to await the unpredictable (and many times brief) substorms. Not only that, but I really don't have any interesting low-light-pollution foregrounds near me, and my go-to rural railroad crossing spot has become a little played out in my opinion.

For those reasons, I'm not usually motivated to pay any attention to all but the most epic of events. This one wasn't close to meeting that criteria, but when I saw reports of a good substorm happening, I went out for about 20 minutes to take a couple of exposures. The substorm didn't last long enough for me to pick up even the green horizon arc. After only three test exposures, I went home.

These storms far overperformed from expectations and model predictions, producing a prolific bolt-from-the-blue fest south of St. Louis. I started at dusk shooting this storm that was down near Red Bud from near Mascoutah. It produced at least 6 bolts-from-the-blue, but a stubborn band of clouds blocked the storm. I drove down to near Freeburg to try to get a clearer view, but the clouds kept developing in the way. I finally gave up and stopped to try and get what I could. The cloud band finally dissipated by the time the second catch happened.

As darkness fell, new cells went up right overhead and began producing flashes. I was too close and started getting precip, so I moved west and set up wide. But the better show was with the original cells to the southwest, which were producing a flurry of clear-air channels. This one is the only time I've captured a true "cloud-to-cloud" flash, meaning lightning connecting two separate storm updrafts/cores:

More cloud-to-air channels. These are "failed" bolts-from-the-blue negative leaders that stopped propagating before the channel could travel all the way to the ground:

The closer storm to my north had continued producing bolts (likely bolts-from-the-blue), but all on the north (opposite of my) side of the cores. I tried circumnavigating the storm north of New Baden to get a view of them, but it dissipated as I arrived at that position.

I made some preparations to travel to Florida to cover Hurricane Helene, but decided against it. The storm was coming into the Big Bend region, an area with no substantial shelter options and a notoriously-aggressive anti-chaser law enforcement regime. Furthermore, the storm landfalling after sunset would mean there would be no good video subjects available. In hurricanes, the power is usually knocked out long before the eyewall arrives, meaning at night it is pitch black during the most dramatic conditions. Had the storm come in during the day, I likely would have headed to Tallahassee or somewhere along the I-10 corridor to the east.

I then turned my attention to what models showed as a potent gradient wind event in the Midwest as the center of the hurricane's remnants stalled just to our south. I initially considered heading to Lexington, Kentucky on Friday morning for model-indicated 70mph wind gusts. However, models slightly bumped up the peak wind gust forecasts for central/southern Illinois, showing 60mph gusts along the I-57 corridor on Friday night. That would make the 45-minute trip to Mount Vernon a much more practical option. I arrived there at 8PM and stayed until 10:30pm as the precip band with the highest wind potential rotated through. Despite 66mph gusts reported just to the north in Mattoon, winds barely reached 40mph in Mount Vernon and I saw no impacts there. Despite that, it certainly had the 'feel' of the first stages of a tropical storm/hurricane chase with the steady winds slowly ramping up and whistling through the trees and power lines.

This was mostly a bust, if not for the fact that I technically did get aurora on camera. Upon hearing the reports of a substorm in progress, I went out and set up for about 15 minutes. As is typical, the substorm had mostly faded by the time I started doing exposures. You really have to stay out all night to catch the best activity, and I just couldn't do that tonight. This is looking north from O'Fallon just after 10pm.

Another halfhearted aurora outing, going out again only after seeing Twitter reports of a substorm for the second night in a row. This one just after midnight lasted long enough for me to get the tail end of the brighter pillars. The red coloring filled my frame at 10mm wide angle. I moved down to the railroad crossing location for a more interesting foreground, but the pillars had mostly faded by the time I got set up there. The second image is a multi-image stack with the crossing gates done in another exposure at a smaller aperture setting.

I went off of Hurricane Milton chase standby mode on Monday afternoon. Models finally settled on an after-dark landfall and the potential for the stronger half of the storm to weaken significantly just prior to landfall - both of which made a chase less likely to yield noteworthy captures. I was also concerned about the mass evacuations from the Tampa region greatly expanding the fuel shorrtage zones as far north as southern Goergia, making the required fuel reserves beyond the capacity to safety carry in containers.