The Olympia doesn’t get many severe warned storms, but we had one this year
If you have followed me and my photography at all you will know that severe weather is far and away my favorite photographic subject. I was chasing storms before I knew that storm chasing was actually a thing and knew that when I moved back home to the Pacific Northwest back in 2012 that having severe warned storms here was going to be a somewhat rare occasion.
Since we moved to Olympia back in the spring of 2012 we have had one severe warned storm come through the metro area. We have had a few in the general area, usually to the south of us, so I was pretty excited when everything lined up in early May for what ended up being a pretty epic storm.
This image was captured after the severe warned cell passed over my head. I sat in 14.5″ an hour rain. For those that don’t know, 14.5″ an hour is a crazy amount of rain. Shortly after this storm passed over me, near the Olympia airport, it travelled to the northeast, over Lacey, WA, where it developed into a wet microburst that did an impressive amount of damage.
I am looking forward to making a trip or two to Arizona over the next month or two and hope to get some Arizona monsoon chasing in, it is one of the things from Arizona that I truly miss.