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Tonight was fun!!!  A non severe high based thunderstorm moved through the Saint Cloud, MN area this evening with some ridiculously intense amount of lightning.

I did not have to drive far, just to the south of town to watch the storm move in and then into the city to watch it move off to the east. 

In the video, there are some pretty close lightning strikes that made it a little scary but to be able to watch a great lightning show this late in the season is a treat.

I was even able to keep working on my Road To Nowhere project.

Looks like I need to get a few hours of sleep then back on the road to chase southern Minnesota later today.

This has what I have been dreaming of doing for the last 15 years.  Real time auroras on video that look just like what I see with my eyes to show all of you.  I did some serious camera upgrades and lens upgrades to finally put the nail in the coffin of the stop motion aurora time lapse crap.  Real time is where it is at now.

What started out as a mellow display of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights turned into an insanely vivid display over Mayhew Lake in Benton County, MN.

The auroras went from an dim glow to a vivid arc to an intensely bright arc.

Also in the video is something I have never seen before, A Proton Arc.

ALL FOOTAGE IS SHOT IN REAL TIME, THIS IS NOT TIME LAPSE.

Clip 1 Aurora arc over Mayhew Lake with the aurora reflecting in the water.

Clip 2 Pan right shot showing the aurora arc in the sky and back to looking northeast over the lake.

Clip 3 This clip is 4 minutes long and is worth watching. The auroras go from the nice bright arch to in insane vivid display of dancing lights to where it is bright enough to be able to read a book.

Clip 4 Non tripoded freehand footage showing the Proton Arc from a different location a few miles south of Mayhew Lake. The camera pans from horizon to horizon showing this strange arc of light in the sky.

Clip 5 – 7 More real time auroras but lower on the horizon. Footage shows the Auroras pulsating and dancing on the horizon.

Trying to figure out a name for this style of lightning.  It was very intense and shot in real time. 

The lightning name I came up with for a nickname,  “Battle Field Lightning” due to the lack of cloud to ground or cloud to cloud lightning bolts but has a resemblance to watching a battle in the distance as the flashes of light filled the sky.

Want to make sure you see storms?  Here is what I do.  Call home and ask what do we need from the store for groceries since the storms are dying.  Go shopping and pick up said groceries, that she told you to get and hurry home before dinner is ready.  

Then walk out of the store and you will see an intense lightning show on display that you can’t chase for more then a few minutes because you have food that needs to keep cold and dinner is in the oven at home. 

Other then the heavy rain and wind, the lightning was all shot in a few minutes last night.

Woke up really early and could not sleep, looked at the radar and said, oh snap, game on.  I missed the first line of storms because I was too lazy to get out of the house but I did get on the southern edge just before sunrise.  Wow a thunderstorm with vivid lightning moved across area of Big Lake, Minnesota. While not severe, it did produced a lot of dangerous cloud to ground lightning strikes.

I posted some photos to my fan page on Facebook.  I’ll get everything on here when I have time.

I finally got around to working on the compilation edit of all the ridiculous Car Crashes and Winter Weather  “Slip and Slide”.

This is years of my best of the best footage of numerous car crashes, spin outs, stuck cars, and even some guy falling on his ass on the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

As far as I know, nobody was killed in any of the accidents in the crashes in this video.  But a lot of ego’s were probably bruised 🙂

All footage shot while working freelance for various television news networks.

Contact StormChasingVideo.com to license the clips in this video.

And now for the next big adventure in our lives.  Come Valentines Day 2016, we are adding a new member to our family. 

Yeah, I have already heard all the jokes from my friends about now they know why I was not out chasing all the garbage storms in May and stayed home to do something else.  Well yeah!!! 

We are so excited about having a baby and adding to the family.  Since we are older, the medical staff was worried about everything at first but so far all of the tests have come back showing were in our early forties going on 30.  

Neva is still pretty worried about everything and we will never be totally 100% out of the woods until the baby is born but right now, everything is on track for a Valentines Day birthday. 

One thing we did learn that put me at ease but really did not help Neva is that we were told by one of the medical staff at our last visit that her “Morning Sickness” was actually a good sign for the baby being healthy.  I joked about it being an all day sickness and learned as the father, in this to situation to pretty much shut up because the line of communications was between the staff and the Mother, I was just there to take notes and make sure she does what they told her to do for her and the baby to stay health.

Since Neva said I could be as descriptive as possible within reason for my blog, I will make this joke.  What is it like with living with someone with morning sickness that is actually an all day sickness?  What does it sound like?  Well from the TV Show South Park.  This is the only thing I could come up with what I have been hearing for a couple times a day for the last 2 months…  A Dying Giraffe…

Otherwise, life has been pretty normal, just have not been able to chase more then a few hours from home now since I have had to be on call if something happened with the baby. 

The funny thing is all of our friends and family have been telling us that the Morning Sickness should go away in a couple weeks.  They have been saying that for week’s and still everyday I hear the Dying Giraffe. 

The best quote Neva told me to talk about is what the Doctor said.  He said when he used a devise to listen to the babies heart, “You are totally pregnant”.

So the highlights for the past month, seeing several tornadoes and some insane storms close too home, finally able to announce the news about the baby and the best thing ever was missing the storms on 8/12 way up north.  Wait, what, missing a storm was the best thing ever you say?  Yes, because in the ultra sound images above, our child waved and said hello to us.

Severe storms impacted central Minnesota last night and early this morning with large hail and vivid lightning.  It was another great opportunity for a local chase.

While I was busy during the day and was not able to make it up north for the chase in the afternoon, I was able to make it up for the chase in the evening.  Before I made it to Brainerd, MN, the VIL or Vertically Integrated Liquid was in the extreme range on radar and it looked like I was in for some fun.   The down side was that it was going to happen after dark and no city or town would be in the path of the core.

In the image above, if you right click on it and view the full size version, you can see that a hail core with possible 4″ diameter hail was right on top of me.  Knowing the storm setups up here and this time of year, I doubted the radar data was accurate.   When the hail core hit, I was right, it was extremely heavy rain and golf ball sized hail.  Still pretty intense hail but not softball size. 

I played with this storm for a while and then drove home to Saint Cloud, MN where I waited for the next round of storms with some pretty vivid lightning.  The lightning in the video is pretty intense and looks great in real time in the footage.

What a insane chase day.  With Category One Hurricane Force Wind Speeds, the storm that I was on in Kingsburry County, South Dakota, it was one hell of a storm.   Footage of the severe storm that hit Kingsbury County, SD with a possible micro-burst or downdraft picking up a travel trailer across the road from me and throwing it over 50 feet into a farm field. There were no drag marks in the bean field.

Another great chase day where we saw 5 different tornado touch downs from the same location just south of Hawick, MN.  Not bad for someone that does not chase anymore according to others that think you have to chase all the garbage to be a real chaser when forecasting is the key to not wasting your time.  I think I earned a glass of the 18 year old The Macallan, that I’m sipping on now.  

Today started out where I had to take care of some things around home and at the office again so I got a late start but the target was in my back yard.  I was still at the office loading up gear when the first tornado warning was issued.  The storm was only 30 minutes to my west so it was just a matter of pick up the cameras from the house and hit the road.

I met up with the new kid, Riley just north of Green Lake and we headed to the east side of the lake to watch the storm since there are very few places in the area that have a decent view for chasing.   After seeing how the inflow was still surging into the storm and another updraft was moving north to the tornado warned storm, I told Riley we needed to move and we ended up in an area just south of Hawick, MN where I knew there was a spot we could park and see the storm and wait for it.   

A few minutes later we were watching this in the sky with an almost perfect view of the horizon considering the area was hills, trees and ponds.

Now we were in perfect position just south of Hawick, MN watching the wall cloud and meso with intense inflow and rotation a few miles to our north.  I know, why didn’t I get closer?  Simple answer is if you got closer you were stupid because of the tree’s and lack of visibility with this storm.  This storm required some distance from the meso to be safe and to see what was happening to get some decent footage and photographs.

It did not take long for the storm to pulse back to life and with in a few minutes, it dropped what I can confirm in the video, 4 new tornadoes near Hawick, MN.  They only lasted from a few seconds to a few minutes but it was an amazing sight if you were a chaser but I heard that a farm did take a hit from the storm. 

Here is the video from the chase. 

Here are some stills from the tornado.

It was a Red Sky In The Morning for the Twin Cities metro area as the drive in to town was filled with lightning and heavy rain. Once in town, commuters were dealing with the heavy rain on the Nicollet Mall.

Clip 1 Roof camera with lightning on Interstate 94.

Clip 2 Pre dawn with the red sky along with a rain shaft and flashes of lightning.

Clip 3 Pov shot on Interstate 94 with reddish orange sky and lightning

Clip 4 POV and lightning on side road near Big Lake (had to stop and get fuel on the way to Minneapolis).

Clip 5 – 8 Heavy rain on Interstate 94 after sunrise.

Clip 9 Minneapolis skyline on the Nicollet Mall in the rain.

Clip 10 People getting off a bus and opening up umbrellas.

Clip 11 Woman walking with an umbrella

Clip 12 Lots of people filling the camera view with umbrellas

Clip 13 Man standing with an umbrella while waiting to walk across the street.

Clip 14 People getting off a bus in the heavy rain and opening up umbrellas.

Clip 15 Man walking in the heavy rain with out an umbrella and has to cover his bag up with a garbage bag to keep it dry.

Clip 16 Biker in the rain.

Clip 17 Someone walking towards the camera in the heavy rain.

Clip 18 Biker in the rain.

Clip 19 One man puts a bag over his head while the other just stands in the rain and then someone walks up with an umbrella

Clip 20 Woman walking across the street towards the camera in the rain, with an umbrella.

Clip 21 People walking on Peavey Plaza in the rain with umbrellas.

Clip 22 – 23 Traffic in downtown Minneapolis in the rain.