Another Storm Video You Should Watch

Last month, I gave a totally rave review to a storm chasing video by Pecos Hank.

In that post, I mentioned in passing my other favorite storm chaser, Mike Olbinski.

Olbinski usually focuses on Arizona. Every year, in the mid to late summer moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean finds its way into the Desert Southwest, creating a "rainy season" of sorts. It's called the seasonal monsoon.

This rainy season in Arizona and surrounding areas  consists of thunderstorms that develop over the region. Unlike the humid East, where haze often obscures the delicate yet powerful structures of thunderstorms, the visibility in the deserts remains great.

Most of what happens with the best of these thunderstorms are microbursts and haboobs, which are thunderstorm-generated dust storms.

Olbinski's beautiful time lapse videos usually focus on these microbursts and dust storms. When you speed up the footage of these phenomeneno, like Olbinski does, you really see the power of these storms.

As in the Pecos Hank video,  I'm not going to provide you with the link, so you can click on it and give Olbinski more hits. At least I think that's how it works.

Just click on this sentence to view the video, called Monsoon V.

A Pecos Hank Storm Chasing Video Is Absolutely Beautiful

A still shot from Pecos Hank's new video "A Storm of Beauty"

I'm going to take a break today from discussiong snow and winter cold and highlight a new video by my favorite storm chaser, Pecos Hank. It's his best yet.  

In his Texas drawl, he explains in the new video called "A Storm Of Beauty" some of the most breathtaking aspects of big thunderstorms. He explains how and where to view them, and how to photograph them.  

For us Vermonters, who don't exactly live in Tornado Alley, Pecos (real name Hank Schyma) highlights some of the wonders of thunderstorms that we occasionally see and enjoy in Vermont, and pretty much anywhere else.

 These include shelf clouds, mammatus clouds, and lightning. (Though you should always try to view and photograph lightning from a safe place.)

What I've always loved about the Pecos Hank videos is he avoids the yelling and screaming and dangerous moves that bring the chasers too close or even inside the tornadoes. For Pecos, he pays attention to art.

Pecos Hank, like fellow storm chaser Mike Olbinski, appreciates the allure of thunderstorms, which frankly are my favorite kind of weather anyway.  Most of the "A Storm Of Beauty" footage is time lapse.

Pecos is especially talented at establishing the foreground scenes in his videos. He outdoes himself with this talent in "A Storm of Beauty."

Below the drama he's capturing in the skies, we have scenes like a well-kept farmhouse, or some old, abandoned trucks, or grain bins, or train tracks, with a train zooming by as lightning flashes overhead.

You can see how Pecos Hank embraces the Great Plains of the United States. He's really a part of that world, and it shows.   He is also an accomplished musician, and he feature his music in the video.

One spectacular example of his music in his song and especially video for "Drive Under The Moon." in which he uses some of his storm footage for a haunting and mysterious music video.  Also definitely worth the watch.  Seems like all his videos - both storm and music - are moody.

"A Storm of Beauty" ranks right up there as easily one of the best storm videos I've ever seen. Every weather geek, or photographer, or people who just love nature should definitely watch.

To be fair to Pecos Hank, I won't display the video in this post. You'll need to click directly on the link below, so he directly gets hits on his video and YouTube channel.

Click on this this blue sentence to see the video. It's totally, totally worth it.