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. 

Awesome Time Lapse Of Big Storm Engulfing Manhattan

Severe thunderstorms hit parts of the Northeast Thursday.

I found this awesome time lapse of one of the strong storms engulfing Manhattan, then just as quickly zipping on out of town:

Another Spectacular Time Lapse Video by Nicholas Wegner

Nicholaus Wegner has released a new timelapse video of
storms, and the video is absolutely gorgeous. 

A little over a year ago, I highlighted a spectacular time lapse video of severe HIgh Plains storms by photographer Nicholaus Wegner. 

It was called Stormscapes 2, a followup to a previous, similarly named video. The photography and the awesomeness of the storms is worth viewing again and again.

Now Wegner is back with Stormscapes 3, a time l lapse compilation of the storms he chased during 2015.

He's really outdone himself with this one.  It is a gorgeous video any weather geek, and anybody else for that matter will want to watch over and over, just to experience Wegner and nature's art.

His forte are supercell thunderstorms, and other extreme spring and summer storms on the High Plains of Wyoming, Colorado and other spots in the region.

Wegner captures the fascinating and sometimes abrupt these dangerous storms undergo as they loom over the remote prairies, hills and farmsteads in the West.

On Stormcapes3, my favorite part is the energizing ending with the all the lightning. Wegner advices against watching that segment of the video if you're sensitive to strobe lights and rapid-fire flashes.

The best way to watch the video, below, is to use full screen and have on some high quality headphones, as the music is wonderfully synchronized to the video.

Hat tip to Slate for alerting us to this new video.

Mike Olbinski Strikes Again With Awesome Storm Time Lapse Compilation

Mike Olbinski strikes again with his new monsoon
storm time lapse compilation. Just awesome.  

I've become a big fan of photographer and storm chaser Mike Olbinski.

Some of his work has already been featured in this here weather blog thingy.

However,  you can never get too much of Mike Olbinski.

He says he logged 48 days and 17,000 miles, mostly in Arizona during the summer monsoon storm season capturing these storms.

He's collected images of the storms into an artistic time lapse compilation that is just mesmerizing to watch over and over again.

This is true whether or not you're a weather geek.

I love how in many of the segments, you can see the thunderstorm microbursts heavily crashing to the ground. I'm sure whoever or whatever was under those microbursts had quite a jolt of wind and rain, to say the least!

He captures the bubbling up of towering thunderheads, strobe light lightning at night that makes you almost feel like you're in a bad 1980s nightclub, and dust storms blasting across the desert landscape.

Here's the video:

Yet Another Gorgeous Time Lapse Of Severe Storms

I found yet another time lapse compilation of severe storms and this one is absolutely gorgeous.

Image from "A Storm of Color", a time lapse compilation
by Pecos Hank.  

It's by Pecos Hank, a full time storm chaser with a great YouTube channel.

In this video, I'm not super crazy about the narration, but the videography is exquisite.

I especially like how Pecos Hank often frames the scene with a human scale landscape or surroundings.

This is just brilliant and beautiful. Watch:

Cool Time Lapse Of Nighttime Arizona Storm, Dust

The ever-reliable Arizona photographer and videographer Mike Olbinski captured this scene around Phoenix earlier this month of nightime lightning, dust storms and clouds, along with traffic, airliners and city lights in this mesmerizing time lapse video:

Love This Colorado Supercell Time-lapse

Watch this mesmerizing time lapse video of a supercell thunderstorm spinning like a top in Colorado on Friday.

I'm not aware of it causing much in the way of damage, but way cool:

Magical Mount Washington Summit

What the view from atop Mount Washington was
on September 12, 2014.  

The summit of Mount Washington is usually a forbidding place: Hurricane force winds, ice, temperatures way below zero, insane wind chills, and summer snow sometimes.

On other occasions, Mount Washington is magical.

I missed it when this video came out, but back on the night of September 12, the aurora borealis were visible in much of the northern third of the United States, and other countries in the Great White North.

Atop Mount Washington, a low overcast shrouded northern New England during the early part of the evening, but the top of the mountain poked above those clouds.

So you had what is known as an "undercast" and a clear sky above the mountain.

So we get this wondrous time lapse video of the aurora, along with views of the undercast coursing over ridges, and past the top of Mt. Washington.

We also get images of sunrises and sunsets, the lights of little towns in the valleys, lights that get lost in pockets of fog that form near the rivers.

Like I said, it's magical.

Here's the video:

"Undulatus Asperatus" Clouds Help Create Fascinating Video

Undulatus Asperatus clouds over Cedar Rapids, Iowa
a few years ago. The clouds look very scary
but do not cause severe weather.  

"Undulatus Asperatus" sounds like the name of a horrible, rare, disease, doesn't it?

But it's a fairly rare type of cloud. It actually wasn't identified as a type of cloud until 2009. (Unlike the clouds we've long been familiar with. You know, cumulus, cirrus, that type of thing.)

Undulatus Asperatus clouds look dark and menacing as they move across the sky. They make it look like the Worst. Storm. Ever. is coming.

The name of the cloud roughly means "very turbulent, violent form of undulation," says National Geographic, which makes the cloud seem ever more scary.

But these clouds don't signal dangerous weather. They seem to be most often seen across the Great Plains of the United States. They usually appear in the morning or midday near weakening thunderstorms.

Undulatus Asperatus clouds have never been known to cause severe weather.

A video that's gone viral in the past week or so shows a time lapse of Undulatus Asperatus clouds over Lincoln, Nebraska in July.  They look otherwordly, and probably scared a few Nebraskans.

But the video is mesmerizing. Watch:

Extremely Cool Time Lapse Of Storm Over Missouri

Monday evening's storm loom over Ferguson, Missouri.
The storm was partly credited for calming down protests
in the town over the police shooting of an unarmed
black teenager.  

For fans of weather porn, the viral video in this post hits the spot.

It's a great time lapse of a strong thunderstorm moving over the St. Louis suburbs the other night.

(Weather porn, for the uninitiated, is video or images of really big, bad storms, so the video in this post is definitely SFW)

The storm also hit troubled Ferguson, Missouri, where there have been sometimes violent clashes between protestors and police over the past two weeks.

The storm briefly disrupted demonstrations, and is said to be partly responsible for interrupting things long enough to slightly reduce tensions there.

The really cool time lapse video is below:

Totally Awesome Timelapse Of Supercell Storm Over Barcelona

This video has it all. Scenic location, good production values, and best of all, a rotating supercell thunderstorm.

Video was taken in the past week in Barcelona, Spain. Totally amazing!!

Amazing NYC Severe Storm Timelapse

Severe, damaging thunderstorms hit pretty much every state in the Northeast Thursday.

New York City was one of the places hit. Here's an amazing time lapse of the storm sweeping over Manhattan. So, so cool!

Awesome Time Lapse of Huge Alabama Gush Of Rain

Stills from a television station skycam showing brief
but intense gushes of rain in Montgomery, Alabama.  

A television sky cam caught what appears to me to be a microburst, or at the very least a couple huge gushes of rain with gusty winds coming out of a storm cloud around Montgomery, Alabama.  

I'm not sure when this took place but it was probably quite recently, as the video was just uploaded today.

Whoever got hit by that gush or rain probably experienced a quick, strong gust of wind, too, and maybe some hail

But whatever. It's really cool. Especially when you see it in time lapse

Nice Thing About Spring Snow Is It Melts Fast

There's still a little snow on the ground at my house in St. Albans, Vermont this morning, two days after a mid-April dump of 3.5 inches of new powder interrupted spring.

By late Thursday, only a little bit of the snow that fell
Tuesday night remained in my St Albans, Vermont yard.

But the rest will go today amid temperatures in the low 50s. The nice thing about spring snow is it melts fast under a strong sun.

To demonstrate, here's a cool time lapse video taken in April 2013 in Northfield, Minn. It shows 10 inches of April snow disappearing in 72 hours.

So, for areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin that got anywhere from six up to 20 inches of snow yesterday, there's hope spring will return.

Just watch the video: