A week ago, 500pxer and Internet-famous storm chasing photographer Kelly DeLay uploaded an awesome iPhone photo to his Facebook from out in the field.
He and Ben Von Wong had gone storm chasing together and stumbled across this gorgeous supercell that was literally glowing blue. That’s what it actually looked like, and the reason is baseball sized hail…
“The color comes from the reflectivity of the larger hail,” writes Kelly. “[it] glows teal!”
We asked Kelly to upload the photo to his 500px as soon as we saw it on Facebook and he did just that as soon as he got home and grabbed the better photo off his “real” camera (poor iPhone…).
That’s the photo you’re looking at above, and it comes with a somewhat scary story attached. That beautiful blue storm was, according to Kelly, moving wickedly fast when they ran across it. So fast they couldn’t outrun it…
This was a supercell outside of Mitchell, Nebraska on 6-16-15. The core of the storm had baseball sized hail, that is one of the reasons why it is so teal…
The storm started moving so fast we had to find a gas station in town to take cover from the golfball sized hail—we were not going to outrun it. The town flooded while we were sitting there. 70mph+ winds hit us while we were sitting at the gas station waiting it out.
The question I find myself asking every time I see one of Kelly’s amazing photos and hear the story behind it is: “is all this danger worth it?” And every time, it’s the same answer: “Hell yes!”
To see more from Kelly, follow him on 500px, check out his website, or show him love on Twitter and Facebook.
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