Your Best Lightning Shot to date...

[Greg McLaughlin]

Here are five of my favorite lightning images taken over the past few years.

The first image is from August 15, 2019 in southeast Kansas. This is a single 8 second exposure from the leading edge of an MCS that formed out of a cluster of tornadic supercells near Alta Vista, KS earlier in the evening. I have about a dozen quality photos from this location of one of the most intense CG lightning barrages I have ever seen.

The second image is from southeast Saskatchewan Canada in July 2017 from a marginally severe storm.

The third image is from Tulsa, OK in August 2018 from a non-severe thunderstorm as it hammered downtown with an intense CG barrage.

The fourth image is from November 30, 2018 near Webbers Falls, OK. This CG burst came out of a tornadic supercell just minutes prior to the formation of a long-track eF2 tornado which hit Cookson and Blackgum, OK

The fifth image is from Coweta, OK in June 2017 of an impressive CG strike along the leading edge of a loosely organized MCS

 

[Bob W]

Downtown Wilmington, NC looking north. This did not hit the building. It was actually several miles north. I've actually had a few people say I did this with Photoshop. I have no Photoshop skills.

I

 

[JeremyS]

Here are a few I took from the last couple of years.

 

[James Wilson]

Not my best but this was taken at over 9000 feet in New Mexico so my highest elevation one.

 

[Mike Thornton]

One of my most favorite lightning bolts that I have ever captured was on October 21st, 2017, near the town of Manitou, OK, in Southwestern Oklahoma. No, this is not a composite, but rather two lightning bolts that struck AT THE SAME TIME! You can even see a 3rd stepped leader failing to make it to the ground. Recently I acquired a Canon M50, so I am excited to use that to capture beautiful lightning bolts this year.

 

[Verne Carlson]

One of my favorites from back on July 27, 2006 looking down over Denver, CO

 

[Paul Hadfield]

Caught an upward strike emanating from a not too distant turbine blade back in April 2020. Hoping schedule and opportunity make it possible to spend time in our (C IL) wind farm to witness what goes on as I've noticed higher strike concentration for this area on Radarscope. Assume this is due to height and/or static generation from spinning components?

 

[gdlewen]

When I think of a best picture, I think favorite picture, and I keep coming back to a single set of photographs, of which this is one, and certainly not the best I have ever taken. The difference is context: what we were doing when we took the picture. What it means to the photographer, and if he’s lucky, to the viewer.

North of Tucson, AZ. Looking south from W. Ina Road a couple of miles E of I-10
Pentax K-1000, 50 mm f/2.0 (kit) lens.
Kodacolor II 100 ASA Color Film
Shutter Speed: B-setting, “until the next flash”​

Here’s the context. A monsoon thunderstorm was drifting W off the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was a dark site, and quiet, with just an occasional sprinkling of rain and no wind. Some large creosote bushes are visible off to the left of the field of view, and the flash is just at the edge of the heavy rain curtain just visible due to the striation in the luminosity around and near it.

This view is gone forever: buried beneath cluster housing, strip malls, and Pusch Ridge resorts.

 

[Jeff Wright]

People fly drones around tornadoes…anyone in Florida put a heavily tented pane over a GoPro near the base of the rockets where Uman and sons fired rockets into thunderstorms?

 

[gdlewen]

People fly drones around tornadoes…anyone in Florida put a heavily tented pane over a GoPro near the base of the rockets where Uman and sons fired rockets into thunderstorms?

I don’t know about the GoPro but they have put high-speed cameras at launch sites. Here’s a paper by Uman and others. What I wouldn’t give for one of those high-speed cameras….

http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Biagi%20et%20al%20%5B2010%5Da.pdf

I'm sure most of the members of StormTrack have at least one lightning video that shows one or more stepped leaders, but to see the discharge process at µs resolution is just...wow. This is just one example from a simple search. I know there is a site with more high speed lightning videos that are not hosted by YouTube, but the URL escapes me at the moment.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022GL101482

 

[Jeff Wright]

I want to see other camera tech.

If the GoPro isn’t fried, perhaps heavy tint could reveal the core of the bolt.

Looks like they don’t need rockets anymore

Scientists used a laser beam to bend a bolt of lightning for the first time

The technology offers hope lasers could one day be used as lightning rods to protect people from storms.

www.businessinsider.com

That could be weaponized…an expendable drone fires a laser over the top of a storm towards a target to induce a strike much more powerful than the laser itself.

 

[gdlewen]

I want to see other camera tech.

If the GoPro isn’t fried, perhaps heavy tint could reveal the core of the bolt.

Looks like they don’t need rockets anymore

Scientists used a laser beam to bend a bolt of lightning for the first time

The technology offers hope lasers could one day be used as lightning rods to protect people from storms.

www.businessinsider.com

That could be weaponized…an expendable drone fires a laser over the top of a storm towards a target to induce a strike much more powerful than the laser itself.

That's pretty cool. I know that high-power femtosecond lasers are generally used in vacuums due to ionization by the high electric fields around the pulse. I never thought to use it to create a charged corridor to guide leaders. (We did create lightning--of sorts--when I worked at the NEC Research Institute by focusing a picosecond laser in air, but that was a rookie mistake. Every time the laser fired a spark formed in mid-air at the focus of the lens. That was cool but this is cool-er). It gets better; check this out:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1400111

As for the GoPro--I wonder if the next generation will have better dynamic range so there is not so much "blowout" of the lowest few hundred meters of channel. I have tried Hydrogen-alpha filters, crossed polarizers, and neutral density filters for daylight lightning stills with little success. Maybe others have the "key to success" in that area, without using video. There are a lot of good daylight pictures out there but getting the success rate during the day that you can get at night is something I just don't know how to achieve.

 

[Steve Frederick]

Wow!
I only went through the first 2 pages & many spectacular photos.

Mine aren't anywhere near those, but the thread is titled 'your best lightning shot'

 

[gdlewen]

Wow!
I only went through the first 2 pages & many spectacular photos.

Mine aren't anywhere near those, but the thread is titled 'your best lightning shot'

@Steve Frederick: Every "next lighting picture" will be your favorite, I think. That's the way it is with me.

P.S. If any of these are video frames, try single-stepping through the frame sequence to see if you caught any stepped leaders. I've been surprised at how often that occurs. I just think it's cool we can capture leaders with normal video, something you normally associate with streak cameras (old-school) or high-speed video cameras (very expensive and which I hope to have one fine day.)

 

[T Wells]

Early afternoon monsoon thunderstorm near Ruidoso, NM

Nikon Z6 with a Z 24-70 2.8 lens.

ISO 100, f5.6, 1/125s