Front row seating for a spectacular show.
I knew I was in the right place when the tornado warning message from Environment Canada popped up on my phone.
I stepped out of my car after a long day of driving from town to town and stopping at the odd small gas station for snacks and drinks. I was about an hour south west of Regina when I stopped near an intersection on a gravel road. A long day of rocking out to Van Halen as I cruised along the highway was about to pay off.
When I got to where the action was starting, I positioned my tripod and fired up my camera. I had headphones on and was listening to Tommy Guerrero's album "Road to Knowhere" as the clouds were slowly making their way over to me. It was magical. Like I was living in a movie or had a front row seat to a show that few will experience. If you ever go storm chasing, I highly recommend putting on some ambient tunes to really immerse yourself in the action.
The wind blowing hard as I was snapping photos left and right. I was adjusting the shutter speed, aperture, white balance and ISO to make sure I got this moment in the best possible way. I wasn't going to let this chase be a quick photoshoot, I wanted to take my time with it.
I was snapping photos faster than my SD card could process them. Over the course of about an hour, I took close to 1000 photos of this storm as it made its way across the plains. My folder reads close to 26gb of media.
Suddenly, at the drop of a hat, the wind stopped. It was dead silent apart from the light rumble of thunder in the distance and crickets in the grass as the clouds kept getting closer.
Not long after the wind had stopped. A sudden drop in temperature came over me. The rain-cooled outflow was creeping across the land. It was a refreshing cool that gave me a break from the hot summer weather.
I was there for about an hour before the storm passed over me and made its way east to parts unknown.