As I blogged one year ago on this date, Central Pennsylvania is in a typical enhanced severe weather pattern now (mid-August). In fact, the whole month has been pretty good for storms... which means that the Pennsylvania Storm Chasers have been getting good storm footage. Take for example AccuWeather's Elliot Abrams got this incredible "Cloudpocalypse" time-lapse from his house last night:
Elliot often gets neat time-lapses from his location because he is facing up Skytop Mountain, so as air moves upward, it forms clouds in front of him. After the storm passed through State College, the sun was temporarily visible, creating a strange hue outside. As it moved away, it was lit up by the sun in this time-lapse from my back porch:
Around 125 local storm reports have been issued by the NWS in our state in August, according to data from IEM, and over 200 severe thunderstorm and flood warnings have been issued by NWS offices covering the state in August:
Central Pennsylvania has not often been in the severe weather area so far in August, but the state has had thunderstorms of some sort in 13 of the 16 days this month, as shown by the radar loop below:
I didn't just take video last night. You can also see pictures of my sunset-lit thunderstorm cloud at the bottom of this WeatherMatrix Facebook Page.
I haven't done really well with lightning photos this season, due to a lack of time to storm chase and few overnight storms, but I did get one strike on video the day before yesterday. Eli Roberts took the video capture above, showing lightning and a rainbow, last night. None of this, however, beats Ron Shawley's lightning photos from Aug. 8 near Johnstown, shown below. He has also taken some good sunset and cloud pics over the last week.
Sharx Security has sponsored a recent upgrade of our statewide AccuCam Weather Camera Network and I've been reviewing the hardware and software.
Derecho or no derecho, last night's storm was plenty severe in many places from Chicago to New Jersey, including here at my house in State College, Pa.
Was the incredible photo of lightning striking the new World Trade Center last Sunday real, or was it a hoax? I investigate.
During an unprecedented large tornado outbreak last week in Oklahoma City, Storm Chaser & Engineer Tim Samaras was killed, along with his son Paul, and Carl Young.
I met Sean Casey and toured his TIV2 Tornado Intercept Vehicle in 2011. Yesterday, that vehicle found itself in a large, violent tornado, and the video is incredible.
Snow was reported in Pennsylvania and New York on May 24, as viewers looked forward to temperatures in the 20s on Memorial Day Weekend.
Jesse Ferrell
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