The Earth Story

reder.or

🌫️ life of the cloud 🌫️

For a few months out of every year, the northern high plains bear witness to some of the most incredible and beautiful severe weather events on the planet. Rotating and rolling monsters composed of moisture and heat, sculpted into towering behemoths by wind and terrain. I do hope that this timelapse short film does these terrifically terrifying beasts of the sky justice. Keep in mind that everything about this video is over the top. It's bombastic, slow, fast, then slow, then fast, has cows mooing somewhere, is weirdly edited and paced, and overall a little bonkers. But these storms are bonkers. Especially the nocturnal ones.

Severe systems displayed in this video include diurnal supercells (mostly LP and hybrid), tornadoes, mesoscale convective systems, and my favorite, the nocturnal low level jet driven supercell. Possibly not a real thing. But also a real thing.

robertbellospirito

It was a wild sight watching this super cell sucking in all this air and moisture in #SouthDakota . To be able to see what #nature creates is truly amazing. This timelapse was about 25 minutes..

Two years in the making. I made the tough decision last year to save everything I shot that spring and combine it with whatever storms I captured in 2019 and make the best possible time-lapse film I could. It was incredibly difficult to sit on that collection of footage for over a year, but I'm glad I did. When you've done a few of these, at some point you gotta work even harder to top yourself and I did my best to make that happen. Even though I've lost all perspective at this point having watched this a million times during editing, I do feel it has some of the best footage I've ever compiled into one of these films. I had such a high bar set and many, many clips did not make the cut.

My storm chaser friends will recognize some memorable supercell/tornado events like Tescott, Tahoka, McCook, Hoisington, Cope, Imperial, Quinter, and Denver City (my personal favorite). I was lucky to be on those days, even though I did miss a few that I would really have loved to have been able to capture.

None of these clips would come alive without the right music and I searched and searched and searched for months until landing on the right tracks back in May. Luke Atencio has such a gift and two of his songs were blended to create the track for this film. Proud and thankful to be a Musicbed Ambassador. They have collected some of the best artists and musicians anywhere, and it's an honor to be able to use their songs.

I want to thank some people here who helped me along the way. My tour guests from the past two years who came from all over the world and spent their hard-earned money to join me for storm chasing adventures...you all are amazing. Marko Korošec, a friend and epic storm chaser from Slovenia, who helped me with some forecasting last year when I was leading tours by myself and starting to get drained. You saved my butt on a few days.

Brett Wright...who has become a close friend of mine and is one of the best chasers/forecasters I know. Thanks for joining me for the grind of essentially four tours over 38 days this spring. I mean...I never could have done that without you buddy...you have my eternal gratitude. I learned so much.

To all of you watching, who follow me on YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Twitter and those who support me on Patreon...thank you SO MUCH for all of it. You guys are amazing and your support and kind words over the years has been an incredible motivator. I am humbled and honored.

Finally, to my amazing wife Jina and the kiddos...it was really hard being away, especially this past spring. I made it back more than I thought I would, but it was still grueling and difficult. Thank you Jina for everything you do to help make this happen. And for supporting me no matter what. Even encouraging me when I sometimes feel like quitting. As I always say, and is the absolute truth, I never would be where I am without you.

There is also a special "post-credit" dedication someone who has always pulled for me and been in my corner since the beginning of this journey :) We are both huge Marvel fans so he will definitely get a kick out of that!

Okay, rambling is over....hope you enjoy!

Technical Details:

Everything shot with two Canon 5DSRs and various Canon lenses. A couple lightning sequences with the Sony A7R3

All clips available in 8K Resolution

Processed in Lightroom, LR Timelapse, After Effects and Premiere Pro.

I captured this stunning supercell near Orla, Texas on June 1, 2019. Several supercell storms fired off late afternoon in southern New Mexico and west Texas that day and I managed to get out in front and just clear of the hail core on this one as sunset was approaching.

ladzinski

This #stormChase was one to remember and without a doubt one of the rowdier experiences I’ve spent in a car. Much of the day was spent getting pummeled by hail as our master storm driver @krystlejwright somehow managed to keep the car pinned to the road! It was a photo finish to say the least, as @nampix masterfully navigated us into position to capture this otherworldly #supercell . This kind of formation is known as a #motherShip in the storm community, it’s visual shape and form is pretty self explanatory as to where it gets its name! Quite possibly the most beautiful storm formation I’ve ever seen. Here’s a trio of time lapses of the beast, more soon!

/ Shot with @nikonusa  #Z7 internal interval timer

wesleyaston

Shot these clips of this cool storm the other night. 2 are videos sped up, and 1 was shot as a timelapse.

Good and bad things about shootong both ways, but the main thing is getting the shot.

tornadotitans

What makes a wall cloud dangerous? In short: if its persistent and rotating its time to really pay attention. Watch the video for more

Supercell thunderstorms, despite their menacing appearance and reputation, are simply nature's attempt to fix the imbalance of warm air beneath cold air, in the most efficient way possible. All thunderstorms are a byproduct of the sun heating the earth's surface and creating an unstable configuration of lighter, warm air, beneath heavier, cold air. What makes certain thunderstorms a supercell is the addition of wind shear: when they form beneath a strong upper-level jet stream.

The difference of wind speed with height adds a spin to the storm's updraft, similar to that of a sink drain, and the displacement of the the storm's rain-cooled air (its waste) far away from it's updraft base where it ingests the unstable warm air (its fuel), allows supercell thunderstorms to thrive for hours and cover hundreds of miles. Once their fuel supply is exhausted and the imbalance is corrected, they weaken and decay. This weakening process typically manifests itself as what storm chasers call "gusting out". This occurs when the amount of rain-cooled air overwhelms the lighter, warmer air, and it surges out into the lower density and cuts off the storm's fuel supply.

This collection of timelapses was gathered over the last six years from Texas to North Dakota and everywhere in between. The project started out as wanting to be able to see the life cycles of these storms, just for my own enjoyment and to increase my understanding of them. Over time, it morphed into an obsession with wanting to document as many photogenic supercells as I could, in as high a resolution as possible, as to be able to share with those who couldn't see first-hand the majestic beauty that comes alive in the skies above America's Great Plains every Spring. After more than 100,000 miles on the road and tens of thousands of shutter clicks later, this is the result. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Music by Guy Andrews: guyandrews.co.uk

Shot on Canon cameras. Processed using the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and LRTimelapse.

This photogenic storm tracked over the Nebraska panhandle while producing baseball size hail and frequent lightning. Timelapse was created with a series of 8k still images.

Copyright Chad Cowan - StormLapse.com

Music by Isaac Hananiah