Finally a Nighttime Lightning Photo Shoot in Pennsylvania
Our severe weather season in Central Pennsylvania has been close to par this year, with several days of photogenic storms, but what's been missing up until now (at least here in Central Pennsylvania) was a good night storm. And by "a good night storm" I mean an after-dark but before-midnight storm, because who really wants to wake up at 3 a.m. and fool with a DSLR camera and timer to do long exposures. That changed last Wednesday.
Even though I was at the tail end of a stomach flu, I was able to drag my equipment out on to my porch. I probably should have ventured out in the car, but that comes with a whole slew of logistical problems. The first storm was a loner that drifted south of my location around 8:30, which was great because I was able to shoot from my back porch with no rain.
That storm let out some excellent "anvil crawlers" before it arrived:
A new storm popped up to my Northeast before the main line of storms moved in around 10:00 but I didn't capture anything from it. As the line moved in around 10:30 p.m., the shelf cloud moved overhead, the lightning illuminating it:
Of course, I moved the camera up to better capture the shelf cloud as it moved over me and missed part of a huge lightning strike. To get an idea exactly how much lightning these storms had, check out the GoPro videos from both of my porches, timelapsed 50x:
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