I started the day over in Spiro hoping for something to pop during the afternoon since we had more sun than expected. The cap was just too strong even with the extra sun so around 330pm I went home to wait on the storms to pop later. As the storms began to pop up in NE OK/NW AR I made my way to Chester where I waited on the storms to come to me. I got a few lightning shots here:
- Chester I540 Lightning
Before the storms got to me I had to head back south as the northern part of the line had weakened a bit. The storms to the west of Fort Smith began to have some good supercellular characteristics so I decided to target south of Fort Smith. I was able to get around the storm at Witcherville and stopped there. The lightning really picked up at this time and radar showed the storm strengthening. Drew already posted one of the better lightning pictures below. Here is another:
- Witcherville Severe Storm
The picture above shows the lightning and the white streaks around that is hail and rain. Golf Ball size hail was reported near Enterprise with this storm at this time.
- Witcherville Severe Storm
If you look closely at the above picture you can see the wall cloud at the bottom middle. Also, barely noticeable is the large meso above the wall cloud that takes up much of the picture (the right/northeast edge of it is just to the left of the right side of the picture)
After a few more minutes the wall cloud came into better view.
- Witcherville Wall Cloud
By this point I was inside the notch / hook feature. I didn’t leave till I was right up next to the wall cloud and by that point I was 3/4 surrounded by the storm. I only made it south a few hundred yards before I was slammed with strong RFD (rear flank downdraft). Winds of 60-65 mph limited visibility to just a few feet and penny size hail began to rain down. I exited out of the rfd for a few minutes but entered again as I headed south from Mansfield on that several mile long east/west stretch of Hwy 71. Around this time my winds which had been strong (45mph) out of the North/Northwest immediately shifted to Southeast winds (30mph). I continued south on 71 and eventually made my way over to near Booneville to take a few pics of the still severe warned departing storms.
- Departing Severe Storms
A few more pics are viewable on my website = HERE.
Post by Brian Emfinger
40/29 TV Weather Blog 
I did notice that the 40/29 radar was showing low level rotation in eastern Leflore and south Sebastian yesterday…
Hard to tell with the pictures since it was night but it looks alot like a shelf cloud. Of course I’m going to go with Brian’s word though that it WAS a rotating wall cloud. Just interesting that none of the velocity radar’s showed much rotation last night.
Dave,
The picture was taken from inside the notch/hook feature looking west/nw. At that point I was 3/4 surrounded by the storm with RFD to my south/se, wall cloud to my west, and hail and rain core to my north. If you look closely on that one picture with the multiple cg’s you can actually just make out the large meso above the wall cloud. I wasn’t convinced at first when it was still on the horizon but as it got closer and easier to view there was no doubt it was actually a well organized storm and wall cloud. The rotation wasnt too strong and I wouldnt have even called it rotating (since its at night you cant see) except you can see in the complete series of pictures I took the weak rotation which was in the area where the tail cloud intersected into the wall cloud.
Thanks for reading and watching!
Brian Emfinger
Interesting.
Thanks for the description!
I had no intention on doubting you knew what you were talking about. I just wanted to clear things up. I see what you are talking about, looking at the pictures again. Keep up the good job! I enjoy your work.
How did you take those pictures? Looks like long exposures, but what F/stop and ISO Speeds? Digital or Film? I’m an amateur, and would love to get a few shots like that up on Mount Seqouia or out on the fishing dock at Lake Wedington.
Josh,
I use a 8mp digital slr camera. Most of the lightning was shot at ISO100, F5.0 and 30 seconds. I probably wouldn’t go 30 seconds too much on super close lightning like that but I was trying to get the wall cloud lit up and have one or more of the close cg’s in with it. The wall cloud picture was shot at ISO1600,F8 and 13 seconds. I wouldn’t go with ISO1600 too much either. You can see how grainy that pic is. The lightning was focused along the edge of the meso/ffd (forward flank downdraft) and so when I was that close I didn’t have any lightning in picture or close by lighting it up. If you have any more questions about lightning or storm photography feel free to email me at…
brian@realclearwx.com