Logan County Lightning Chapmanville, WV - July 29, 2000
Saturday was one of the few times that chasing a storm in West Virginia paid off.
Usually, storm systems in Appalachia are too dynamic to chase. By the time you can get in the car and catch up to an active cell, it's already fizzled out. That wasn't the case this night.
At 8:00pm, radar was showing storms moving into Southern WV, with the strongest cells on the southern edge of the line. Charleston was going to get some lightning, but it was clear that the Logan, Boone, and McDowell County areas were about to experience the best of the storms. I got in the truck and headed south on Corridor G (Rt. 119).
Just past Danville at 9:15pm, the sky was really flashing. This time the storms weren't dying out on me. In fact, I ended up directly in the path of the strongest cell in Chapmanville, in northern Logan County (radar at right). I pulled off of the road and set up the camera out of the passenger side window facing west. Cloud-to-ground lightning was close and occuring in all directions.
Though I missed two very close strikes that hit behind me, these two flashed in the camera's view. The storm that moved through Charleston at the same time turned out to be rather weak, which made my 40-mile (one way) drive worth it.
My work is, at this very moment you are reading this, generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I was forced to shut down the professional side of 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.
Web Site Design and Internet Marketing by CIS Internet
From Dan: Please Read
To my regular readers, I offer my apologies for this heavy-handed notice. Unfortunately it has become necessary, so please bear with me!
Please don't copy/upload this site's content to social media or other web sites. Those copies have been a critical problem for me, seriously harming this site and my photography/storm chasing operation by diverting traffic, viewers, engagement and income. "Credit" and "exposure" does not benefit this site or my operation, rather they threaten my ability to cover my operating expenses. Please read my full explanation for this notice here.
Before continuing, check each box to agree to and acknowledge these two statements:
Click this button to finalize this acknowledgement:
