2018 storm season in pictures - part I - April

Hello everyone! It's the last day of April, which was a very active month in terms of severe weather in Poland, so I decided to write a post about the storms I photographed during this month.

This year the storm season started very early and so far it's very active - I've already been on 4 storm chases this month - it's a big amount, especially considering that the season just started. During the first month of the season I already saw lightning strikes, shelf cloud and lots of rainbows.

The season started on April 8. The environment was quite interesting for the beginning of April, but all the forecasts indicated that the storms will form quite far away from me - too far to chase them, given that the setup wasn't really amazing. But when I saw the storms form closer to me, I decided to chase them - and it was a very good decision! I stopped on a nice viewpoint between two storms and captured my first lightning strike of the year!

Few minutes later it started to rain, so I decided to head back home. When the rain stopped, I stopped to photograph the storm from the distance and captured more lightning strikes!

The next setup established just 2 days later. Unfortunately I didn't have time to go far for the storms, so I stayed at home. In the evening, when I found some time, I noticed a storm coming nearby. It was very misorganised and not very active, so I decided not to chase it - instead I went to my viewpoint north of my city in hope of seeing the rainbow. Few minutes later I knew it was a good decision - the setting sun lit the entire storm in amazing color and a rainbow showed up.

Next two weeks were rather quiet in terms of severe weather. Next good looking setup established on April 25. The instability was weak, but the wind shear was really impressive, therefore the storms were accompanied by very strong wind. First cell of a day wasn't very photogenic, but it produced a nice rainbow while moving away from our location:

The next cell was way better - it had a very photogenic shelf cloud and was accompanied by a wind so strong, that it was hard to stand still!

We didn't have to wait long for next chances of severe weather in my area - interesting setup established on April 29. It was a "loaded gun" setup, which is very rare in this part of a year. As usual in such setups, we were worried that the convection might not be strong enough for the "loaded gun" to fire - fortunately about a hour before sunset a storm started to develop to our east, so we decided to chase it. We found a viewpoint west to the storm and we watched it as it was becoming very colorful due to setting sun illuminating it from west.

When this storm died, new cells started to develop all around us during the blue hour after sunset. We decided to reposition and go south to photograph the storm coming from this direction. When we arrived to the viewpoint, the southern storm weakened a bit, but we spotted a little isolated cumulonimbus cloud to our west, illuminated with lightning from inside and the moon shining right next to it. It was a really astonishing scenery.

So that's all the storms I've seen this month. It's the most active April since I remember. We not only have lots of storms here in Poland, but they're also really strong for this month - some of they look more like late May storms! I hope the rest of season will be at least as active as April!