Gust Front and Shelf | Kaycee, Wyoming | 23 May 2023

Published on May 23, 2023

May 23rd was a travel day, getting from central Montana down into New Mexico for the next batch of setups. On the way down, we encountered a few storms. One rotating cell had its structure shrouded by rain as we approached from the north on I-25. It managed to dissipate just as we were about to flank it along Rt. 192. But other storms were popping up in the area and southward along our route.

We pulled off on TTT Ranch Road south of Kaycee to watch one of them gather itself.

As the outflow flew by, I made some totally futile attempts to shoot some of the lightning happening inside all the flying rain. And just because of the way things work, most in-the-thick-of-it lightning will be firing in a direction that flings rain straight into the car and camera. Which means window mounting the camera is no good. So I sometimes try hand-holding the camera further back away from the window. There are pretty low odds of getting something good that way, although it’s worked out a few times so I’m always tempted to give it a shot. Anyway, this last image was of the one strike I did manage to catch, in all it’s motion-blurred glory. It landed ever so close and for whatever it’s worth, the extreme motion blur highlighted the orange plasma at the landing point really well.

Next stop was eastern New Mexico for our chase day on the 24th.