OK folks, after much delay, here begins my report on Monday's severe thunderstorms, which was our first real outbreak of the summer here in State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map]. As of this morning, I mostly have pictures from the first and second (pre-nighttime) storms. These storms featured the greatest lightning show since sometime last year, and also produced some small hail at my house, which is extremely rare here. Later tonight or tomorrow I'll add more lightning pics from the nighttime line of storms and video (including timelapse and slow-motion) from all the storms.

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Here's the best-of photos. It was an afternoon and evening of...

MUSHROOM CLOUDS...

RAIN SHAFTS...

MAMMATUS CLOUDS...

GUST FRONTS...

BIZARRE LIGHTNING...

AND IN-BETWEEN... A "SEAHORSE CLOUD".

Here's how it went down. Around 4 PM, a severe thunderstorm (as high as 69 dBZ on the radar, showing rotational signatures) was travelling towards me through southern Clearfield county, sparking Severe Thunderstorm Warnings all along its path. At this point, AccuWeather HQ, my house, and Henry's house are all in the path, so we're all pretty excited.

A warning was issued just to my south when the storm was still well organized, but then it started losing its shape and strength as it came down the mountain when a second warning was issued to the east of me as the storm passed over and got more organized into a bow echo.

The storm was not impressive coming in, and had a lot of heavy rain with it, so I didn't get any approach video, but I did get a few distant lightning strikes from my front porch around 5:00. Overall, I was not thrilled.

Time passes, the air becomes less humid and cooler, I figure the front is through and it's all over and we have missed yet another potential severe weather day. What I don't see on the radar is a storm developing in Jefferson County around 7 PM. I take the dog for a walk, observe the sunset, then I hear thunder on our way back and see dark clouds moving in from the Northwest. A quick check of the radar shows that I need to pack my equipment in the car and pop over to the other side of our development where I have a good view to the NW.

Shortly after 8 PM, the storm has made it down the mountain intact, and although small, is dropping a lot of lightning strikes (white dots on the radar image below). The cameras are running, recording the gust front forming and approaching me, with occasional lightning strikes. The sun is setting behind the small storm which makes for added photographic goodness (see pic of gust front above). To my south, Henry is recording video as the storm moves towards him.

The storm passes over me, dropping very heavy rain, causing street flooding, VERY close lightning strikes, and a short period of BB-sized hail, which is the first time I've seen hail in years. When it's all said and done, the storm has dropped dozen of lightning strikes across the southern side of State College, with several within a few hundred feet of me around 8:20 PM (if you watch the video, coming soon, during the heart of the storm you can hear that the thunder is less than a second after the lightning).

I drove home as the storm moves on, and again I assume we're done for the day. But the storm starts to propogate sisters to its southwest and soon a line of storms is moving in front of my house, it's getting dark, and I'm out on the front porch under the canopy videotaping lightning until 9:30. You can see the original storm's strikes in yellow below and the new strikes from the line moving southward as white. From these, I got a number of decent nighttime lightning shots, including anvil crawlers, but I haven't finished going through all the video yet. I also had a still camera out attempting to do long-term exposures but I didn't really know what I was doing so I wasn't impressed with the results.

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