Upwards Lightning by Dave
Dave captured this rare atmospheric phenomenon while we were storm chasing in Oklahoma.
We traveled to Tornado Alley from Southern Ontario to chase some of the biggest most dangerous storms on earth at the end of May. Tornado Alley consists of but is not limited to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and moves northwards as the weather warms into summer.
On this day we had been chasing a storm in Texas but as with most storms the sun began to set, so the storm we were on was over. We decided to go to Woodward Oklahoma to set up for the next days chase. Before arriving at our hotel this new storm was still throwing bolts. It was now past midnight and we were exhausted but we couldn’t resist. We past our hotel and went east to a location the overlooked many wind turbines. We had just set our cameras up on our tripods and started taking a long exposure when there was a brilliant, bright flash. We stopped the exposure and saw the most beautiful image on the back of the camera. To our surprise it was Upwards Lightning off of the Wind Turbines and towers in the near distance
The technicals:
Upwards Lightning AKA Ground to Cloud Lightning travels from tall objects upwards towards the storm clouds and usually has positive propagating leaders. In this photograph you can see the recoil leaders off of the king positive leaders (the main trunks), as well as 3 step leaders (on the left) reaching up in search of making contact with the opposite charged leader from above.
