First of all, I do not recommend that anyone do this. I wasn't super comfortable with it myself, and I have been chasing storms for 14 years and am a meteorologist. I was also watching a radar app (Radarscope) with GPS location on my wife's phone, and only acually went 2 miles from our cabin on the Warrior River to get a view of the storms coming in from the NW, then drove back at wide-open throttle (about 43 mph) when the storms got within a few miles of me. Still, occasionally a storm will produce lightning well in front of it, so this may have been a risky idea.
I wanted to see the shelf cloud of the approaching storms that I figured would have strong wind in them. These are the storms that went on to cause 25,000 power outages, many in the BHM area. Notice the shelf cloud (side to side at the base of the storm clouds) approaching us...indicating where the leading edge of the high winds was causing uplift of the air and producing the cloud.
The storms produced vivid cloud-to-ground lightning once they got to the cabin 10 minutes later, gusty winds, waves in the river, heavy rain, and small hail. All things you would not want to be out in a boat in.
Go to myfoxtracker.com and scroll down to see JP's post of pictures of Venus transit past the sun!
Dr. Tim Coleman
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