Energetic Boundary Time Lapses

This past Monday we had a slow moving frontal boundary drop through. It didn't amount to much in the way of severe weather but did produce a few lines of highly charged electrical storms. The initial batch drifting along up near I-80 presented an opportunity for shooting time lapse through the 300mm lens which I had not attempted yet. The first image though uneventful is a 6 minute stack with the storm over 90 miles away to the N of Peoria (I was just N of Decatur IL). The video at bottom shows this as well as other stills in motion.

This is five frames shot over one minute of a cell W of the Illinois river near Macomb IL. Hindsight being what it is, I should have spent more time with this as it spat out a few brilliant clear air bolts. It is not in the video.

14 minute stack with the same line to the N through the regular lens a little while later.

Around 11PM while waiting for outflow to pass from the now exhausted line to the north and hoping for a moonlit roll cloud to shoot time lapse on, new development fired to my immediate SE. Taking interest in the first CU to start throwing sparks and especially for being so compact, explosive development would quickly initiate thus providing an incredible time lapse opportunity. Though I ended up with numerous stand alone single images such as the one below, I've opted to make this post all stacks as each one went together exceptionally well. Per the time allotment for each sequence it's obvious how intense the flash rate was. The stills were only 15 seconds each and due to buffer lag between shots, I still managed to miss quite a few!

28 stills, 8 minutes

32 stills, 10 minutes

17 stills, 4 minutes

33 stills, 10 minutes

29 stills, 9 minutes

23 stills, 6 minutes - The line started to back build so I pointed south.

This was yet another event a better wide angle lens would have come in handy so to not have had to switch back and forth between areas of interest but no complaints as it was a fitting end to a surprisingly productive month despite a few setbacks.