Severe Thunderstorm

This is another storm that snuck up on me. By the time I realized that it was coming, it was nearly over top of us. I didn't have to travel down the road for this one. It came to us. The lightning got a little too close for comfort. One bolt struck just over my car.



Disclaimer: It's probably not a good idea to leave your window rolled down during a thunderstorm. Lightning can make it's way in to the car. However, wet windows make it hard to film anything and lightning was more likely to hit the car's antenna and I did roll up when it was striking directly over top of me. If you don't understand and respect the risks involved or feel uneasy about being struck by lightning, don't do it! You run just as much of a risk of being struck out in the open as you do with your window rolled down.

Here is the radar image of this storm.

Lightning Strike Destroys "Big Butter Jesus"

The statue that inspired a song by Heywood Banks has been destroyed by a lightning strike.



Full story on Jalopnik.

Tornado Warning + Hail

This storm marks the first time that I've filmed hail. This storm totally snuck up up on me. I had no idea that it was coming until the lights started to flicker in our apartment. I have never seen so much cloud clutter before. The clouds turned green and started rotating. A minute or so later, a tornado warning was issued and the storm started to dump hail on my vehicle. I got hit by one of those hail stones and it gave me a little scratch on my hand.



Here are some images that rockystop123 took further in to the storm. He had to pull over because it was raining so hard.

And here is the radar image taken at the time of the storm.

The storm was topped off by a beautiful rainbow afterward. "Tornado sirens" briefly trended on twitter when they where going off. I guess that's to be expected in a heavily populated area. When I got back to our apartment, I was ready to edit video but the power went out for 8 hours so I had to get busy protecting perishable the food that I had just bought that day. I was able to get some work done on my netbook via a car adapter and Wi-Fi at a local McDonald's.