Saturday, June 12, 2010 - 8:56PM CDT   
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6/12 lightning near New Baden, IL
HD CHASE VIDEO: Lightning near New Baden, IL
Despite some pretty impressive instability (4500+ surface-based CAPE), today's storms in Illinois were not remarkable. There was not much to work with in terms of storm structure, hail or lightning as far as video and photography was concerned. As a result, I never left town today, instead choosing to just watch whatever happened to pass either right overhead or close by. The last storms to roll through in the late evening were no different than those earlier, but a few decent scenes appeared, thanks to the setting sun and some 'anvil crawler' lightning on the back side of the cells. This came very close to producing a nice rainbow/lightning combination - but the sun came in a little too late.
click to enlarge:
Explosive corn growth!
As you can see in a couple of those photos, the corn is really getting high - I'm surprised at how fast it is growing. It's grown at least 2 to 3 feet in the past 2 weeks. In some places it's actually already blocking the view of the horizon from the road! I knew beforehand that the corn fields might make storm observing/photography more difficult as summer progressed, so this isn't a total surprise. There are still plenty of views available where the road is more level with (or higher than) the fields, and many of the fields have not been planted yet (or at least not with corn).
