There were two rounds of storms in Illinois. The first developed over northern Illinois around mid-day and evolved into a severe line as it pushed into the Chicago area and areas to the south. With good thermodynamics and a well-defined disturbance, there was concern for a higher-end wind event over a larger part of northern Illinois however it took a while for the storms to get going. The two lightning clips are from the stratiform region behind the convective line. The second round developed as widely scattered strong storms over central Illinois. A supercell developed basically right on top of me-- this storm became my main show from the second round. The supercell quickly became outflow-dominant (shear was unfavorable for supercells to begin with) but the strong instability allowed for deep cores to persist which was favorable for frequent (though mostly intracloud) lightning activity. Stragglers that persisted after the main round weakened developed a "bottom-heavy" charge structure with some nice negative crawlers and a hybrid flash.
EQUIPMENT I USE:
Sony CyberShot RX100V
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YI 4K Action Camera
Model YAS. 1616.INT
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Samsung Galaxy S9 Smartphone
Sony Stereo Digital Voice Recorder
Model ICD-UX570
Video editing done using Shotcut
Lightning information provided by Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) through weather.us/lightning. Note that I only use this information to roughly estimate stroke intensity and distance, the data may be prone to error on my end and my work is not, and should not be considered to be, a formal evaluation of the NLDN's performance.
Thanks to Tom A. Warner and other lightning physicists and researchers who have helped me understand lightning processes explained in my videos. Tom has created a great resource for individuals interested in learning how lightning works.
ztresearch.blog/education/