I went to Emporia and got on the storms that went up just north of there… the little LP put on a good show for a brief period of time before it shriveled up. I worked my way north and eventually back west, kinda working along that line of cells. I didn’t catch either of the birdfarts as I had kinda started pointing myself back to the south by that point.

I eventually ended up south near Eureka on a post-sunset supercell that developed along US-54 just west of Eureka. It was moving stupid slow, and I feel like I sat in front of that thing for an hour waiting to get cored. The storm turned right, kinda diving south as the main line came in and ate it up. I ended up a June-bug infested gas station at Severy and was figuring out the best route to go home as it was well after midnight by now.

I opted to punch straight north to get back to US-54 as there was a lot of lightning in this line and I thought I’d stand a better chance of shooting some on the rain-free backside. Call of the day there for sure… I got somewhere on K-99 north of Climax and spent 90 minutes there shooting the incredible, almost constant crawlers.

Running stupid low on gas and now approaching 3am, I jumped on 54 and was going gas up in Eldorado when I caught a glimpse of this lone tree down a dirt road with more incredible lightning illuminating that. I got greedy, turned up the road, and set up shop for another 45 minutes of shooting. I was not disappointed.  One of my better lightning photo sessions in a few years. Definitely the highlight of the season so far!

I rolled home just before 5am… was a long night, but worth every second!