An Indiana Supercell

Late yesterday afternoon a squall line blew into the area and one cell of super proportions came right across our ridge. As the gust front blew in the cell looked more and more like a supercell you might see in Texas or somewhere in the Plains states. The storm had jumped to severe levels across several counties before reaching Crawford County.


As can be seen in the second picture the cell had four tiers much like you would see in an upside down wedding cake. If it looks like a monster here then anybody who was under it when it was at severe levels a few counties back must have thought it was going to chew them up and spit them out. As the core of the storm flew overhead some slight rotation could be seen at the center. Fortunately the rotation was weak enough that nothing was able to spin out of it. It was definitely an amazing thing to watch as it approached.

The third picture shows the back side of the storm to the southwest. At least two wall clouds formed on this part of the storm but raised back up and broke apart. Dry lightning kicked out in front of the rain curtain further to the northwest. I have experienced dry lightning more than once and it is scarier and seems to be much hotter than lightning in the rain areas. Sometimes heat could be felt off a bolt if it hit close by. With this particular cell dry lightning was being spit out at least two miles in front of the rain at times. It was definitely not a good time to be caught outside with supercharged monster.
I managed to catch one lightning bolt with my camera. Some of the bolts had multiple discharges like the one in the fourth picture. I managed to capture this bolt while hand-holding the camera at 1/25th of a second shutter speed. At times there were multiple strikes all around the house and top of the hill. Some bolts had secondary branches that made them look like giant tree roots. Needless to say this was scary and we were fortunate out house didn't get hit at least once in all of this. Another cell core formed behind this one and moved up along the line. It brought more heavy rain and even more intense lightning with it.Was it a scary thing to watch? Oh yes. But my was it also an amazing thing to watch as well.