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Long time no post... figured I'd take a quick moment to mention that I've decided to put out a calendar for 2014. This one is storm images I've taken over the last few years. I may make another 'seasonal' one shortly. Anyway, the calendar features 12 8x11 images on glossy paper. The images are in the same order as displayed on the cover here!

To purchase the calendar just follow the link http://www.deviantart.com/print/34288305/, click 'add to cart', and choose your method of payment. Most orders will be received in 4-5 days and the price of $29.85 includes shipping! If you've ever wanted to own some of my images but just don't have the cash for a print. This would be a great way to get a lot of images for your money! Great for your favorite storm lover for the holidays or to have some awesome images of nature's power displayed in your home or office! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

In other news... I have quite a bit more free time and plan to be updating the website and my gallery sites here shortly. I've also been entering some contests on various sites! To get updates follow me on twitter @INTOtheRFD or add 'Into The RFD Photography' on Facebook!

Thanks,
Chris

Hey guys,

Just wanted to get a link up to a quick timelapse I just created! Check it out and let me know what you think! The video includes scenes from supercell thunderstorms on the Great Plains both during the day and at night, as well as the Northern Lights when they are occasionally visible this far south!

http://youtube/YxrmFDZZ8ZU

Thanks!

Chris

Hey everyone,

Its been a long time since I've made any updates and I certainly apologize for that! I took a new job that requires quite a few hours so its kept me away from my camera and updating various web pages. I'm trying to finally make some progress on things on the home page and my various gallery pages over the next week! I have quite a few chase accounts to post from this season, but a drought also put a pretty major damper on much in the realm of chasing opportunities. A string of days in early May offered a couple of brief photographic opportunities. Then a pair of late May days offered some incredibly photogenic storms. The first being May 27th, as a tornado warned storm took on some mean structure in Central Nebraska! Here's an image:

Then on May 30th, I traveled to West Central Kansas with good friends and documented a supercell that fired, and then was caught by a squall line near the town of Jetmore! Here was one of our many views of this squall line above a mature wheat field as we neared Dodge City:



I also captured an incredible lightning strike with a rainbow in the golden glow of sunset!



I took a pretty long break while getting on my feet at work... then finally on August 2nd storms returned to the High Plains! We had an incredible intercept in the Black Hills and Badlands National Park in the southwestern corner of the state! Photogenic storms in photogenic terrain, it really doesn't get much better than that! Here's a couple images from the day:





Finally a couple weeks ago, I took a trip out to the Black Hills to camp with some friends for the Perseid Meteor Shower. We ended up spending the night atop 7200 foot Harney Peak on Saturday night, and while most of my better images came during the day, the shower from a mountain peak was an experience I won't soon forget! Here are a couple more images from the trip!





As you can see I have alot of image accounts to get up on the website! I'll be working on those the rest of the week... but until then I hope you enjoy the images! Thank you all for your patience!

Chris

Hey everyone...

I have so much work to do after the last week. I have been planning to make quite a few website updates but have been chasing storms for the past week. May 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th were all chase days. I also went out locally around sunset to timelapse some distant storms on May 3rd. After all of that time in the car I've been recovering and getting some work done the last few days and am finally getting around to work on things.

On May 1st... I chased in Southwestern Minnesota and Northwest Iowa and got a brief tornado warned supercell!





There was also a decent light show after dark!



Then on May 2nd, I chased in Southern Nebraska where the cap finally broke just before dark. A supercell tried to wrap up above my head!





Then I captured the best cloud to ground strike I had ever gotten on the way home!



On May 3rd... I went out around sunset to timelapse some local convection, I also included a timelapse of the supercell developing near Fullerton the previous day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDiZ1RAS0TI

May 4th was a very frustrating day, where supercells tried to get going and constantly weakened right as we would get to them. Here is a quick shot of some mammatus from a dying storm and then a stack of lightning images after dark near Norfolk.





May 5th was the worst day of the bunch... a strong cap stopped storms from developing and we basically got a tan with 1000 other chasers. That being said it was great to chat with friends and put some facebook faces to names in the real world. Ill keep you updated here as I get these accounts done!

Thanks,

Chris

Hey guys!

As promised I got the storm chase accounts up from my 3 days on the Plains last week. Check them out at the following links!


-Northwest Kansas Low Precipitation Supercell-
http://www.intotherfd.com/041212.html


-Southwest Oklahoma Supercell/ Lightning-
http://www.intotherfd.com/041312.html


-Kansas Tornadoes/ High Risk-
http://www.intotherfd.com/041412.html

To help you decide if they are worth a look I figured I better include a couple more teaser images! I'll continue working on getting some other updates done and keep you guys updates... in addition I'll finally be adding some more images here so stay tuned!

Thanks,
Chris

Hey everyone... in the middle of writing chase accounts to post from that 3 day sting of storm chases I talked about in my last post, some suprise auroras occured last night! It was probably one of the best displays I've seen so I figured I'd take a time out to make a quick blog post about it. I should have the 3 chase accounts ready to go tomorrow!

A friend had called and asked me if I had checked the aurora plots at all and I answered that I hadn't he told me to take a look... I did and we talked about how the Earth's magnetic field had been stuck to the south most of the day (good sign for Northern Lights) and the KP index was increasing steadily. Another photographer in Ireland noted that he had a very good display and nearly everytime he has seen them we have too! Somehow... the storm lasted until dark. As twilight set in I decided to head to a wind farm to potentially timelapse the aurora over the windfarm. Before twilight was even gone a noticable auroral glow was already happening! Here is a shot:



Once in finally got dark I had to jump into a couple shots while the first camera was time lapsing! Here is me being a dork with the aurora:



This green arc was rather steady over the next couple of hours... as it started to head north I decided to switch locations to the river front near my house with the hopes it would come back. Finally around 1 am it did... and even though the surge was rather brief it was INCREDIBLE! Here is my favorite shot from the night:



With 2 cameras and a nice aurora display... I made a pretty long timelapse. You can also find that here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVjbnW_wU-w

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Thanks again for your patience!
Chris

Hey everyone,

You may have noticed a lack of updates both here and on my website. Between work and chasing storms I've been pretty darn busy. I chased 3 days in a row last week. The 12th, 13th, and 14th of April. I figured I would make a blog post with a preview of some images so you would know what to expect when I get the actual accounts up on my website. Once that is done I will finally be working on uploading more images to my galleries. Anyway... the first day on the 12th (Thursday) looked good for some storms over Western and Northwest Kansas. There were some concerns about the strength of the cap the further south you went, but also concerns about gulf moisture making it far enough north to create favorable conditions for storms. We started the day in Nebraska and drove to Garden City, Kansas. Making it around 2pm. Soon after a tornado watch was issued for much of Northwestern Kansas and parts of Colorado and Nebraska. We moved slightly north and sat near Tribune watching storm towers rise and fall. It became obvious that the cap was going to hold and we needed to head north... so we went for developing storms near Goodland, Kansas along interstate 70. Once we caught up to the storm the wind shear was so strong it was of the low precipitation variety. Which made the storm visually interesting but not very strong. Here is a preview!



We stayed in Colby, Kansas for the night and awoke in the morning to a forecast that doubted whether we could get storms to form in Oklahoma before dark. But we decided to chance it. Storms fired very early (around noon) as we were just crossing the Oklahoma border. We finally reached a line of developing storms around 3pm. The cell we had targeted rapidly weakened as we approached near Chickasha, Oklahoma. As new storms developed to the southwest. We headed down interstate 44 towards Lawton, Oklahoma and then west. Reaching a high precipitation supercell near the Snyder, Oklahoma area in the Wichita Mountains area. Here is a quick preview from that storm!



We stayed that night in Oklahoma City... and Saturday was supposed to be the big day. A rare 'high risk' of severe weather was issued by the Storm Prediction Center and they called for a tornado outbreak. We awoke early and crossed the Kansas border. Reaching the McPherson, Kansas area before heading west towards developing storms flying northeast across the state at 55mph. After being stuck in fog and low clouds on the early storms we elected to head to the south and west and get into clearer and more unstable air as more storms fired near Dodge City, Kansas and rapidly started to rotate. Here is a shot with a funnel cloud on the storm near Greensburg, Kansas! It ended up as a rather frustrating day as we would get in perfect positions on storms and they wouldn't produce. While the ones we had just left to the north had tornadoes on the ground, or another storm to the south would produce. Sometimes thats just the luck of chasing storms.



Finally I'll sneak in one last photo from my trips to Badlands National Park (I'm working on an image account for this as well) Enjoy! Feel free to let me know what you think, and thanks for your patience as I complete all of these updates!



Thanks again,
Chris

Hey everyone!

I got my storm chasing accounts up from the 28th and 29th of March! The first account is from Central Kansas. I drove down early in the day from Northern Nebraska and waited for a few hours for storms to fire. I was slightly out of position but still managed to catch a developing supercell at sunset, and then some incredible structure with lightning in the dark near Madison, Kansas. That account is here:

http://www.intotherfd.com/032812.html

After a late night I stayed with a friend in Lawrence, Kansas and then set up to chase along a warm front on the Kansas/Nebraska border the next day. There were a few occasions where I thought the storm would produce a tornado but it just couldn't quite get it done. However I still got to witness some incredible supercell structure before heading home. That account is here:

http://www.intotherfd.com/032912.html

Check them out and let me know what you think! I have a couple more website accounts to create and then I will get back to updating my galleries including dA! Thanks for your patience and support!

Chris

Hello everyone!

WOW it has been a marathon 3 day stretch for me. Starting Tuesday night with an unexpected and amazing display of the Northern Lights! This lasted for about 4 hours and I headed to a wind farm near my house here in Northeast Nebraska to time lapse the display. I am sure I will have some still images coming from this one... until I get those processed, here is a time lapse of the display. 3 hours compressed into about 30 seconds!

http://youtu.be/8WpAySFZVss?hd=1

Then on Wednesday and Thursday the parameters came together for some nice storms in Kansas, Southern Nebraska, and Northwestern Missouri. Needless to say after 3 days, 5 states, 1100 miles, 4 supercells, an aurora display, 8 hours of sleep total and ~30 hours in the car I am a little worn out but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Here is a preview from the first chase day near Dunlap, Kansas as the storm organized into a supercell.



Much more to come... I will probably make a post here better detailing the storm chases. Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Chris