Pennsylvania Nightime Lightning From May 8th Storms
At 9:30 PM last night a line of storms filled with lightning was progressing into my home state. Since 7 PM there had been about 15,000 lightning strikes detected from the range of the Cleveland radar.
Based on this, I ended up going up to Skytop Mountain [Google Map] here in Centre County just outside of State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ, from about 1:30 to 3:30 AM to watch the lightning show. Unfortunately most of it was far in the distance, which, while interesting to watch, didn't make for great photos, in fact the one picture that I took is too lame to even show here, but it was a good "test run" for my new camera which lets you leave the shutter open for 16 seconds.
Also up in the middle of the night positioned on top of mountains in Pennsylvania were local storm chasers Ron "R-Factor" Shawley above Johnstown, who got this shot...
...and Jenn Grover who was on Mount Washington near Pittsburgh:
This radar loop (download) was shot while we were deployed (I was below "UNV" and Ron was above "JST"). You can also see a statewide-radar loop (download).
Further north of all of us, there were thousands of lightning strikes as an intense line of storms moved through. The 2-hour strikes at 1:30 AM are shown below; those from 1:15 to 3:15 AM are also available.
What we were really looking for, though, was a shot like this, by Timothy in Botkins, Ohio:
Storm spotter reports were few and far between, mostly in the northwest part of the state (where major storms that moved through Cleveland) came through earlier in the evening. You can read other reports on the Pennsylvania Storm Chasers Facebook Group, where the three of us were sending our updates last night.
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