It’s that time of year again in the Midwest – Tornado Season. As you can imagine, I love to take pictures of storms. They are both terrible and beautiful all at the same time. They bring water to sustain the land and at their worst, they destroy everything in their path.

It can be difficult to shoot storm pictures. It’s awesome to witness something so powerful and beautiful, but at the same time others, especially during a tornado, are powerless against nature’s fury. I am mesmerized and drawn to big storms, but I always have to keep in mind that some of my beautiful images are somebody else’s nightmare.

Last weekend, I was going to have another chance to shoot a powerful storm.

My wife and I went to a wedding last Saturday. As we were walking into the church, I looked towards the north and saw some pretty big thunderheads forming.

“Dang it!” I thought. I had my last big Dirty Kanza training ride planned for the next day. “If it pours again, I’m going to have to ride pavement tomorrow,” I told my wife. For some reason, she didn’t seem as concerned as I was about the situation.

I hoped the clouds would lose energy and fizzle out so I’d have some dry gravel the next day. As we left the church and drove to the reception the clouds were still boiling to the north, but it didn’t look too serious. Maybe I would luck out.

We had a fine time at the reception, ate good food and decided to leave. As we stepped outside I was surprised to see the ground all wet. It had been raining. But then it hit me.

“Ew, this is tornado weather,” I told my wife.

I could feel it. It’s warm, humid and there’s just a feeling about it. It felt bad.

Listening to the radio on the way home we heard there was a tornado on the ground. Suddenly the town was filled with the sound of tornado sirens cutting through the thick air. The tornado was north of Emporia heading towards the town of Reading, Kansas. There was fear in the voice of the storm spotters on the radio as they exclaimed that they were witnessing a tornado on the ground.

We  hurried home. Jen took the kids to the basement while I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed to my favorite storm viewing hill outside of Emporia. My heart was racing with excitement as I drove to my destination. I couldn’t see much and by the time I got to the hill, the tornado had demolished the small town of Reading, Kansas.

It was dark, too dark for the camera to focus, so I focused on the city lights and looked at the sky. There was a symphony of lightning up there. I decided to try and catch some of it using four to six second exposures. There was so much lightning that I just kept shooting, trying to get something good.

As I looked at the images on the camera’s LCD, I noticed a couple of things. First, Emporia’s city lights lit the clouds from below in a different color light than the lightning and the mix of lighting looked extraordinary. Second, as I scrolled from one image to the next I realized the clouds were moving pretty fast. I couldn’t tell with my eyes because the sky was pretty dark. The long exposures revealed what was really happening up there. Seeing the movement of the clouds, I decided to continue shooting images to put together a stop motion video of the clouds just for you.

You can tell when I moved the camera and if you pay attention you will see light trails from some lightning bugs as they went through the frame of the long exposures. As the camera shoots you will also notice that there was still quite a storm brewing to the east of Emporia as a wall cloud is swirling and sucking the other clouds into it. It’s pretty amazing. Check it out.

Here’s a few of my favorite shots with a little Adventure Monkey processing sauce on them.

It appears so brightly lit, but to my eyes, it was pitch black between lightning strikes.

The little town of Emporia casts a lot of light up to the clouds.

As the storm moved away from the city, stars begin to appear in the sky. Simply fantastically beautiful. I can’t wait to see these on canvas.

Feed Your Monkey!
Eric