Sept. 13, 2016

Storm

For the last two days the weather in Iowa and Kansas has been beautiful.  Temps in the 80’s and clear, totally cloudless skies.(And no humidity ).  News weather forecast last night hinted at very slight chance of isolated rain tomorrow (today) afternoon as a front moved through followed by clear and warm days.

About midnight last night we heard distant thunder to the south west.  Thunder continued off and on for an hour or so.  Then it started to become more regular.  Still far away.  About 1:30 or 2:00 am it started to rain gently. Rain of varying intensity (never down pour rate) for a couple of hours with thunder more regular.  About 5am the lightning started accompanied by thunder very close and very loud. AND – very constant.  Several lightning/thunder episodes a minute.  At one point the lightning and thunder was literally every 5 seconds for several minutes. Forked and sheet lightning.  So bright it made night look like day.  So intense that even when the strike/flash was 8-10 miles away (per counting time between lightning and thunder) everything was bright as day.  This display continued for over 2 1/2 hours as cell after cell passed over us.

Above is a screen shot from a radar app on my phone.  Several things to note:  First -This shot was taken late after things had started to wind down.  A bit earlier the storm band was solid (and wider) from lower left to upper right. Second – The blue dot in the lower left is our location. Third – this is a static shot and does not show the movement of the storm.  The storm moved from south west to north east basically along the line defined by the front instead of the whole front moving sideways. Forth – that storm is about 1000 miles long from end to end.  Fifth – Given our location and the direction of the storm movement a very large part of the storm passed directly over us for over seven hours.

Pretty cool.

Take weather forecasts with a grain of salt .

Updated map of this trip:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?hl=en&authuser=0&mid=12x4dHvzJbvb0UcaUtz2NjLNihZE