Recording With Night Vision / Infrared Equipment

[Dennis Sherrod]

This may have been discussed somewhere else here, but I did not easily find it.
Does anyone use or have any experience using any Night Vision or other light enhancing specialized equipment in recording storms at night?
I have used various night vision and FLIR in the past, but not in the public sector or this type environment.
Not taking into account the cost of some of this equipment, does anyone have knowledge or use of either Cooled Infrared Detection or Uncooled Infrared Detection and adaption to video recording devices?

 

[Joey Ketcham]

This may have been discussed somewhere else here, but I did not easily find it.
Does anyone use or have any experience using any Night Vision or other light enhancing specialized equipment in recording storms at night?
I have used various night vision and FLIR in the past, but not in the public sector or this type environment.
Not taking into account the cost of some of this equipment, does anyone have knowledge or use of either Cooled Infrared Detection or Uncooled Infrared Detection and adaption to video recording devices?

I don't think it would be very effective, night vision only has so much range .. I could be wrong though.

 

[Billy Griffin]

I've used TIC guns, or Thermal Imaging Cameras, but their distance is quite limited and I couldn't see any practicality for use in storm chasing.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

The lower end of TIC do have a very limited use and range and are not directly or feasibly adaptable to what I am speaking of.
There are many infrared / night vision imaging devices that have 1 -3 mile range and more. Among other things, one of my unknown areas in this is the temperatures ranges in a severe storm, wall cloud, tornado versus the surrounding temperatures immediately around these formations, mainly at lower altitudes. I do not know if there is usually a relatively same temperature involved or if there may be a 15 degree or more variance.

 

[Martin Kucera]

I was also wondering about the use of night vision devices for storm observation at night - how these behave with the extreme brightness of lightning strikes.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I want to raise this point once again.
Since some of the recent deadly tornadoes have occurred at night, such as Parkersburg IA and Greensburg KS.
I know that night vision has different protocols -infra-red and light amping - I'm pretty sure that the light amping would be more practical.
But as yet no Emergency Mgmnt, spotters, or chasers had the opportunity to use them yet.
Or am I wrong?
The preceding posts haven't had any responses to the affirmative.
No one has yet used them or heard any reliable feedback on this subject.
I would get some if I thought that it would be practical - IMHO...

 

[Steve Miller TX]

I think with enough ambient light, such equipment would work. Since star and moonlight would usually be blocked out from the storm itself, any city light would be the only situation I could see in getting it to work. I'm basing this off using the nightvision capability of camcorders in the past. So, in my opinion, it would work sometimes, but enough to justify the expense?

This also brings up something I've wondered about...and that is the use of spotlights by spotter groups? I remember somebody telling me a story about one being used in West Texas in years past, but not sure if it was a joke, rumor, or fact. I wonder how effective something like that could be?

 

[Danny Neal]

This also brings up something I've wondered about...and that is the use of spotlights by spotter groups? I remember somebody telling me a story about one being used in West Texas in years past, but not sure if it was a joke, rumor, or fact. I wonder how effective something like that could be?

I certainly wouldn't want to be standing out there controlling one of those things in the middle of a supercell!! If the lightning don't get ya, the baseballs falling from the sky will! We use TIC's in the fire service but I don't really see the point of it at night in a storm situation...hasn't dawned on me.

FWIW Parkersburg actually happened in the late afternoon, not night.

 

[Benjamin Rock]

Ive tried using Bushnel Night Vision Binoculars for storm spotting at night. The problems I have noticed are the rain causes grief with the equipment, lightning over loads the optic imagary and shuts it down constantly, and the distance is very limited even with the IR active on it. The storms dont really have a surface per say to reflect the IR light off so its a lost cause. maybe someone has better gear for it, but I had no luck. The ambient light from lightning and surrounding city lights made for a much better viewing than the IR of night vision gear.

 

[Robert Edmonds]

Best luck would probably be with IR camera. In the IR clouds are hotter than the background sky. At an observatory I've been to, we use an IR camera to see how cloudy the night sky is. I'm not sure though how lightning would effect it, or how long the exposure times are.

Here is an example of what the camera produces at night (clouds to the left). Note: This is the whole sky...

 

[Gene Moore]

This also brings up something I've wondered about...and that is the use of spotlights by spotter groups? I remember somebody telling me a story about one being used in West Texas in years past, but not sure if it was a joke, rumor, or fact. I wonder how effective something like that could be?

There was a spotter group northeast of Midland TX that used one of these at night. This was back in the late 80's. The search light (not as big as this one) was mounted on the back of a truck. I watched them sweep across tornado warned storms one night....it sure lit up the cloud bases!