The highlights of summer 2011 in WV

  In the midst of the unparalleled 2011 tornado season, I returned from the heart of Tornado Alley to my home in West Virginia, one of the least tornado-prone places east of the Rockies.  I missed out on the Joplin storm and the May 24th Oklahoma outbreak by a couple weeks.  With some Plains experience, I felt prepared to run down anything resembling a supercell that might go up within a couple hours' drive.  Unfortunately, there were two problems.  First, that didn't happen all summer.  Second, I wasted a considerable amount of time searching for any kind of summer work, which I never found despite several employers' promises.  Still, I managed to see a lot of the sky shows the Mountain State served up, however mediocre they were.  I even got my girlfriend to venture out to a garden-variety thunderstorm to catch a little lightning!  Being with her, my family, and my friends at home after a year in Norman made this an unforgettable summer.  It was much less memorable meteorologically, but here are some of the highlights.

May 23:  The only CG I caught this night connected Milton, WV, with an unimpressive Cb.  Thanks to Heather for tolerating my obsession for a night :)

June 4:  It's always a good night when you can shoot anvil crawlers 50 feet up the street from your house.

June 21:  A modest squall line moved down I-64 into Scott Depot, WV; the most interesting feature was a shear funnel far in advance of the storms.  When the gust front hit (second shot), it was a bad day for trash cans up and down my street.

June 23:  Tornadic supercells in eastern Kentucky, one round early in the afternoon and another in the evening, fizzled but still brought severe winds well into West Virginia.  In order:  a panorama of Scott Depot before the evening storms; a shelf cloud begins swallowing the I-64 corridor; and an up-close view right up under the shelf in Nitro, WV.

July 11:  A weak squall line, the remnants of a derecho that struck the Chicago metro, was only a distraction from the real display--sunset mammatus like nothing I'd ever seen at home.