may 11, 2000
cyclic hp supercell in northeast iowa


At about 8:37pm, Shawn shouted over the two-way radio "Tornado on the ground!". But by the time we could pull over, the tornado had become totally wrapped in precipitation.
A new wall cloud quickly developed south of the rain-wrapped storm. Interesting lowerings could be seen as lightning backlit the storm - the lowering on the right looks particularly suspicious, especially after seeing the following image....
Power flash!!!! Hmmm..... Since this flash occurred very quickly and in an area where there was continuous lightning, I did not perceive this as a power flash. Unfortunately, I did perceive a pair of power flashes which occurred further to the south seconds later that were probably caused by an inflow jet. Because of these flashes, I pointed my camera towards the area where they occurred and away from the wall cloud.
The storms continued to rage across northeastern Iowa after dark, giving us a fantastic display of lightning. Most of it was in-cloud, and this particular flash illuminated another possible wall cloud (just above the house).
There were also a lot of nice anvil crawlers as well. Video capture does not do this type of lightning justice - a multi-second exposure on slide or print film is still the only way to truly bring them out on a still image. Hopefully Ed got some awesome stills from this storm.
One last image of a "double bolt" before we get in our vehicles and head towards Waverly.


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