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All Images Copyright Terry Pallister
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| A thunderstorm
complex developed about 7:30 pm over Lake Pontchartrain. Lightning
was very hard to come by and none struck in view until after the storms
grew and passed over me to the south. I was disappointed, but I kept
one camcorder going just in case. There were a few cg's after the
rains slacked off to a sprinkle between 8:32 and 8:42 pm.
The shots on the first row above for Camcorder 1 all came from the same strike sequence about 2.5 miles off to the NW. The first 2 on the second row were from a closer strike only 1.4 miles off. Too bad both connections were just barely visible on the extreme left and right. The crawler in the last picture occurred at 8:48 pm. The first cg on the first row for Camcorder 2 was 2.6 miles away and the last cg on that row was quite far off, about 10 miles away. Some lightning flashes from the front side of the building tempted me to switch over to there, but I decided the 7 to 8 minutes it would take me to get set up there wasn't worth the lost time. I switched to trying to get some crawlers that might shoot back over the top of the building. At 8:54 pm I was rewarded with a spectacular crawler that sprayed across the sky in view of Camcorder 2 and the still camera. The last 2 shots for Camcorder 2 are the best 2 still frames from this crawler. A much better picture can be seen in Gallery S-2. What a beautiful crawler. |
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| Two thunderstorms on this day. The first didn't provide much lightning. I only got the one shot above at 3:33 pm facing NW out over Lake Pontchartrain, just 1.7 miles away. |
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| The second storm developed less than one hour after the first one fell apart. I was able to get these strikes from 4:35 to 5:12 pm. The cell drifted from WNW of me to due N of me before finally ending. Strikes ranged from 2.5 to 4 miles away at the beginning of the storm to 1 to 3 miles away near the end. My favorite shot of this storm is the double strike captured by Camcorder 2. Storms like this are wonderful. |
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| A short lived close storm developed in the late morning. The 3 shots above facing NW over Lake Pontchartrain occurred between 10:57 and 11:03 am. Both camcorders got the same strike. Rain was coming onto the balcony which limited my aiming range. The 2 strikes were just 1.0 and 0.8 miles away. |
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| A second storm developed shortly before 1 pm. This one was further away to the WNW, so I had to zoom in quite a bit. These strikes occurred between 12:55 and 1:15 pm. All were between 5 and 8 miles away, except for one stray bolt that hit right in Camcorder 1's view. This is the middle one on the last row for Camcorder 1 above. The reflection on the water is really nice. This bolt was just 1.2 miles away. |