Rainshaft Wednesday

Near Royal, Illinois, I stumbled upon a simple paradise.  Gently rolling hills, an unheard of amount of old barns and abandoned homesteads, and an enormous wind farm under construction.  Absolutely libidinous landscape for those of you that enjoy the beauty of Illinois.   

A stationary boundary has camped over Illinois for a few days.  Though I was not expecting much yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised when I glanced at the radar around 4pm.  I had a 20 minute bike home from work and hit the road around 5:15pm.  

North of St. Joesph, Illinois, I stopped to take my first photo.  Set up my camera, turned it on, no SD card.  I can't say this is the first time I've committed such a blunder.  Fortunately,  I had an SD card in my camcorder.  Popped it in, flipped my camera back on, SD card is full.  Typical, I spend hours capturing images and video, but I don't bother to unload my stock.  I deleted a few of the undesirables, but combated my full memory card the entire trip.  As a result, I didn't snap a lot of "mediocre" shots.  I had to conserve my ammo. 
  

The photo above, was taken just east of the first photo.  I continued to follow this storm east through the unfinished wind farm for roughly 10 miles.  After I had these initial photos of the rainshaft, I attempted to capture a photo of the intense and frequent CG (cloud to ground) lightning.  I, of course, did not bring my shutter release cable and attempted to capture a shot while holding my camera on a mini tripod from inside my car.  

As I waited between impressive CG strikes, I couldn't help but ponder how my hobby increases the likelihood that I'll be struck by lightning.  For instance, in early June I was outside my car photographing an incoming storm, that was well off in the distance.  When a CG struck within a 150 yards of me, killing one of my father's cows.  So, I've been pretty uneasy about photographing outside of my car this summer.  While pondering my increased odds of an unceremonious death, I missed several great opportunities to photograph these incredible strikes.  I was able to capture the one above, east of the wind farm, in a stroke of luck. Without a shutter release cable, it's increasingly difficult to photograph these thunderstorm cuties.

At this time, I gave up my pursuit.  The thunderstorm moved east of me and combined with another t-storm to the south.  If you're photographing weather, always be aware of the sun's location.  When you're in-front/southeast of the storm, it illuminates features such as the rainshaft, wall cloud, and/or tornado.  In addition, I always like to move west of evening t-storms and use the sun for new perspectives.  Plus, you almost always observe a rainbow if there is minimal cloud cover on the other side of the storm.

The sun lit foreground and illuminated dark, blue sky.

Another shot with the sun to my back.  A smaller storm popped up behind the orignal storm and produced an impressive rainshaft.  It looks like a Pokemon creature moving across the sky, but interpretations may vary.

At this point, it was only a matter of time before a rainbow showed up.  This is the only shot I snapped of the rainbow, because not only was I out of memory space on my SD card, but it was incredibly peaceful to just observe the rainbow, lightning, rumbling thunder, and chirping crickets.  I sat on the hood of my car and just enjoyed the moment.  Even better, there were no cars or people in sight.

You may recognize this area, as this is where I captured my first photo of the day with an impressive rainshaft.  I decided to stop and photograph the sunset on the way home.


While you're here, I uploaded a photo album last week.  You'll find it under Photos and under Pre-2011.  In the album you'll find photos I captured long ago.  I'll continue to add to the album this weekend as I find/edit my ancient photographs.