Huge Storm Cell...no damage though!

[Catmendo]

A massive storm cell happened to pass directly over our home yesterday evening, no damage done, except I'll be shopping for some new "boxer's" during the week!

I was watching the cell develope on the western horizon for about an hour. Suddenly I realized that we were in its direct path. As it began it's final approach and was bearing directly down on us the winds began to really howl! Tree branches and leaves began sailing by our windows and then a wall of water and ice (in the form of hail) began to pumel the house!

Thankfully nothing other than extreme winds, rain and hail is all that developed. Thankfully no twisters!

[finnbay]

Whoa! That is quite the anvil head! Great use of light!

[Grant Pearson]

Great pictures! Glad nothing was damaged, except the boxers!

[MN Shutterbug]

That looks downright frightening. Anyway, underwear is cheap.

[Steve Foss]

Stu, glad to hear no one was hurt!

That first image in particular has just the right scale. The threatening weather (a la "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Poltergeist") looms just right over the defenseless little country house.

It tells a great story, buddy.

I would consider very closely lassoing the house and all foreground elements and dropping mid-range levels to brighten them up somewhat. It's all experimentation (and doing this will reveal lots of digital noise in the shadows), but see if you do or don't like that look better once. It also would have been an ideal situation to quickly set up a tripod and use the auto-bracket feature, making one exposure spot on, one over and one underexposed, and then blending the over and underexposed images in photoshop.

Great work man! Gorgeous light on the clouds, and wonderful drama!

[DMN]

Nice work, looks like it was lucky there was not damage from that system.

[Dbl]

Natures finest on display!

[WCS]

WOW! Those are some impressive storm clouds. I'll bet that was an awesome sight to see, although I am sure you would prefer them not to be headed right for your house. I am glad all turned out well.