Recently I was going through boxes I picked up at storage and found my collection of weather images, snapped with various 35mm cameras, from my early years of interest in storm chasing and photography. I finally was able to get Mom’s scanner working, after discovering that my scanner, for whatever reason, is broken. It was a long process and it took a lot of troubleshooting but I was able to get it all done.
I went through various photo albums and photo packs to find some of the better images from 2003-2004. Now of course, this isn’t close to all of my images, I still have a whole bag of 35mm film that needs to be developed. I just haven’t been able to afford to do it.
I ran all of these through extensive editing in Paint.net, a free editing software, more advanced than Microsoft Paint, but less advanced than say, Adobe Photoshop or something similar. But it does a very good job. I enhanced the color and balance of the color in these images, and also adjusted the brightness and contrast accordingly, then removed a lot of noise from the images. Some areas of the images may appear “too soft” but that’s not a very big concern, considering what they looked like before I began processing them. Anyway, below are a series of images that I have digitally retouched. I have divided them up by event, going only by memory, except for a handful of images from 2004. It was really great going through and finding all of these. Click any image for a larger view. Enjoy!
These first two images are from Cedar Springs, MI. Snapped from my yard, of Cumulonimbus Clouds. The first image was part of a departing thunderstorm, and the second image was a pop up style thundershower after the main batch had pressed eastward.
The next two images in this series were actually taken by my Mom, but for me. I don’t remember the exact reasoning behind why I wasn’t able to do it myself, but that’s just how it was. Anyway, these images were of Lake Breeze Thunderstorms that developed to the east and southeast of Kent City, MI. These images were taken in Kent City, MI. The first image is of a powerful updraft, and the second is of a very nicely formed anvil.
The next two images were taken by me on July 13, 2004. Severe weather developed in the afternoon and evening hours and prompted many warnings across lower Michigan and also prompted the issuance of a Severe Thunderstorm Watch. The first image is of some Mammatus Clouds that were leftover under the retreating Cumulonimbus Anvil. The second image shows the Mammatus Clouds, the Cumulonimbus Anvil. The second image was also a very lucky shot as I captured a bit of anvil crawler lightning in there. The color was great at sunset. Viewed from Kent City, MI.
The next three images contain two of my absolute favorites from my days shooting with a 35mm camera. Now they may not look “pretty” but the first two are from underneath a mesocyclone with all kinds of SCUD hanging around. It was very windy, and this storm was tornado warned. This was captured in Kent City, MI from the front porch. I only had a disposable camera with a handful of images left on it for this event, yes I was very angry that I could not get more images, but this was the best I could do. The third image is the back end of the storm. (you may notice the second image of the mesocyclone is different sized, that is because I cropped my finger out of the image)
The next set of images are from August 9, 2004 of a severe warned hail storm that dumped (the classified as) marble sized hail across the Kent City, MI and Sparta, MI areas. The first image is part of the inflow of the storm, the second is of the Cumulonimbus Cloud just exploding into the mature stage, and the third image is of a followup storm with the initial cold front at sunset.
The next three images are from Cedar Springs, MI of some severe warned thunderstorms. The first two images are from a couple different cells that merged into one later on in the afternoon. You can see how it almost looks like a volcano explosion in image number one, and in image number two you can see the anvil feature taking shape. In image three you can see the distant mature anvil as it pressed off to the east.
The last set of images were taken in Lowell, MI during the Lowell High School Graduation Ceremony. (Not: This was not my graduation) Some severe weather had already affected the area earlier that day with hail and damaging winds before this main batch of storms pushed into the area. This was a squall line with embedded supercells, and this was one of the supercells in particular that later became absorbed into the main storm line. A Tornado Warning was issued for the area. It was hot and humid all day, so the storms had plenty of energy to feed off of. The first image shows the wall cloud, and the crowd of folks hurrying to get to their cars. The second image shows the mesocyclone with wall cloud, to the left of that, the downdraft which was a rain and hail core, and what was blasting me at the time was the gust front created by the RFD (Rear Flank Downdraft) region of the storm. It was quite dynamic. The third image is from underneath the mesocyclone itself. Basically just a shot of the low hanging base with some SCUD. The fourth image shows the mesocyclone’s wall cloud and in the background behind the trees and such is the rain and hail. One of the best supercells I have ever been under here in Michigan.
I hope you enjoyed this entry as much as I enjoyed sharing it with all of you! I’ll see what I can do regarding getting more film developed, before they stop developing it.