COLORADO MAGIC (Akron Tornados, Red Sprites & Epic Lightning // May 23, 2025)

Make sure to check out my friends from @Unwetter-Freaks since they had to re-make their channel!

Out in the Great Plains, there are certain areas that seem to be prone to produce highly photogenic storms significantly more often than others. For me personally, Eastern New Mexico has been the absolute GOAT when it comes to beautiful storms, BUT - there’s a place famous among the storm chasing community, that is agreed on so much, that us weather photographers flock towards it, whenever the chance arises.

This is Colorado Magic!

Weather models had been pointing towards somewhat isolated supercells erupting across the Northeast of Colorado, so our chase starts in the early afternoon close to the city of Sterling. High CAPE values and strong wind shear were overlapping just to the West and storm chasers soon transformed a lonely highway gas-station to a local hotspot, a true “Chaser Convergence” as we call it! And always a great opportunity to meet some of the friends from all over the world.

Not long, and the first storms were already blowing up to the West, with one particular storm seemingly taking off, so we eventually decided to close in and see what was awaiting us. Our first glimpse of the fresh supercell already revealed great dynamics, resulting in the formation of a short-lived tornado, that erratically spun up swirls of dust below what would soon be the old mesocyclone. Way to go out in style, so of course I had to Timelapse the whole thing!

With the new cycle closing in, but still needing some more time to organise, we rushed Southwards and got in position again, perfectly timed to watch a new, much more robust and much more dusty tornado taking form. It was truly awesome to see the dust from the ground ascend towards the cloud, while the cloud slowly descended towards the ground, until they finally collided in the middle to forme this new beautiful tornado, shrouded in a veil of dust. Time to set the camera down, start a Timelapse and really take in the view.

With the RFD now closing in fast, we once more headed away, chased by the churning twister.

Crossing through the town of Akron we got back ahead of the storm, with tornado sirens blaring but ultimately lost view of the twister, as it got severely wrapped in all the dust, kicked up by a strong RFD. Meanwhile our friends from Unwetterfreaks got really close and had this great view of the beautiful tornado. Of course, this spectacular view came at a price, so they did end up getting smacked by large hail, that left some good dents all over the car.

After this spectacular tornado cycle came to an end, the supercell was now visibly falling apart, so we enjoyed a few last moments of intense light scenes, before slowly eyeing another supercell, that had been sitting much further Southeast for a few hours at this point. It was time to go again, off towards this massive-looking tower of clouds, totally isolated, beautiful and slowly being lit by the setting sun.

Once we made it to Kit Carson, a small town, where in 2023 we spent waaaay too much time with an exploded tire, the sun had already set and lightning was starting to become more apparent. This storm surely would provide us with a great show - in true Colorado Magic fashion. Time to sit back and enjoy the show.

I even managed to capture a few Red Sprites, although they must have emerged from a much more distant storm somewhere over Kansas.

With a motel booked for the night in Lamar, we still had a few miles to go, but one last time I had to shoot a Timelapse of this storm, that was still going strong, approaching midnight.
If you like what you see, feel free to leave a like and check out our other social platforms for much more content than here on YouTube!
_________________________________________
Prints & More:

http://lightningdude.com
http://insatgram.com/jonaspiontek
http://gewitterjagd.net

Видео COLORADO MAGIC (Akron Tornados, Red Sprites & Epic Lightning // May 23, 2025) канала Jonas Piontek