A couple of weeks ago, I knew there were strong thunderstorms in Estonia moving in our direction in the northern part of the country, but it looked to me like these would not reach my location. I still wanted to go to the nearby field to maybe see some cool cloud formations and just maybe see some distant lightning. Well, I got more than I hoped for...
When I first arrived on the field, I saw a cool sunset with sunlight creating rays and shadows.
On the other side, I was darker clouds, but it was nothing too much. I was in contact with my relative in central Estonia, who relayed to me info of crazy clouds coming over him that maybe moved in my direction. I hoped I could get some nice photos.
These are just regular-looking clouds here, still cool.
About 15 minutes later, I saw these really cool-looking clouds that had this dotted pattern. But look at the far side of the clouds, this was more what I was interested in. I could now see the shelf cloud approaching me.
The weather was silent. I could hear the distant thunder rumbling, but other than that, there was no wind. It truly felt like a calm before the storm.
The clouds, however, moved fast, and the crazy layered shelf cloud moved quickly towards me. Now look at this...
To be honest, that felt scary. Since I'm the only object on the field, I don't want to stay there when lightning is straight above me, but I could see that there was no thunder after this cloud, so I stayed and the view was mesmerizing.
This is a panorama of 3 horizontal photos. This cloud took almost half the sky I was able to see.
Only a couple of minutes passed when this cloud was almost above me...
...and with that, the silence was broken. It suddenly brought strong wind gusts, and in just seconds, it got so dark that it was like night. It was crazy to see.
The shelf cloud is right above me.
I could also instantly feel how the temperature rose about 4 degrees C.
Soon, the first shelf cloud passed, and it got light again outside, but I could already see a second shelf cloud approaching. I was now in the middle of two shelf clouds.
It looked almost the same as the first one, but there was more darkness after this layer.
It was silent again, no wind at all.
Here you can see how I'm positioned in between two of these high shelf clouds.
When it came over, it got as dark as night again, and now I was able to see many lightning strikes hitting on the horizon, but it was still farther away, so I didn't feel the need to flee.
The second shelf came over and I could see the third layer or third shelf cloud but it was less organized and looked more like a mess.
After the third shelf came over me, I could clearly see the many lightning strikes, and I tried to take some photos. It was now dark as night at all times.
Having now taken some of these lightning shots, I felt like it was time for me to leave this field because it got too dangerous for me. I drove back home. The lightning and thunder came straight over me, but then out of nowhere, the storm disappeared from my location.
It was so cool to follow this weather event, and I sure did get some awesome shots out of it!
