Storm Highway by Dan Robinson
Storm chasing, photography and the open roadClick for an important message
Storm Highway by Dan RobinsonClick for an important message
Lightning Season in West Virginia

April 17, 2002

By DAN ROBINSON
Editor/Photographer
Important Message 30 Years of Storm Chasing & Photography Dan's YouTube Video Channel Dan's Twitter feed Dan's RSS/XML feed

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

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.

[ 35mm slides from this storm ]

At Right: Cloud-to-ground lightning in Dunbar, WV on Wednesday evening.

The Mountain State's summer-in-spring weather pattern continued Wednesday evening with a round of spectacular thunderstorms that developed around the Charleston and surrounding areas just before sunset. The storms hardly moved, and stayed very active well after dark, providing an abundance of photo opportunities for several hours - all with no chasing mileage required.

The activity began around 7:00PM with several cells firing up in southern West Virginia from the Kentucky border all the way to Kanawha County. A cell drifted over Dunbar at 7:45PM, beginning with a heavy downpour that brought me outside during church to close the windows that I had left open in my truck. Seconds later, frequent cloud-to-ground lightning began to spark out of the cells. I grabbed the digital camera and took a few video clips for a couple of minutes before heading back inside. Below: Two clips of fairly close cloud-to-ground strikes in Dunbar, WV at about 7:45PM (RealVideo format - click photo to view):

(NOTE: The lightning in the above clips saturated the camera's exposure, making the flashes seem much brighter than they were in reality.)

After church, bright flashes were still surrounding Charleston, and I spent the next 2 hours at home shooting the fireworks. Providing the slides come out, photos will appear on this site soon.

Below: Doppler radar (left) and lightning strike data (right) at 8:00PM on Wednesday evening:

Below: Rapidly developing Cumulus Congestus clouds begin to reach for the stratosphere above Dunbar at 6:00PM earlier in the afternoon:

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