Twitter account of storm and lightning chaser Chris Kwinta (The Lightning Hunter on YouTube). Grad student at UAH studying lightning in MCSs. Part 107 pilot.
Joined May 2023
- Tweets 1,004
- Following 234
- Followers 207
- Likes 5,122
199 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
4 Apr 2025
BOOM!!!!!! Closest CG of my entire life!
6:45PM from an isolated supercell in S TN.
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Unfortunately since I'm permanently locked out of my Twitter on my PC, I can't post photos/videos here anymore (without painstakingly using my phone), so I'll be sharing links from my FB profile.
Here's a cool upward flash I got on Wed night.
facebook.com/story.php?story…
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Wind remained below 40 mph at Round Lake Beach, IL, however the peak instantaneous rainfall rate reached 3.78 in/hr on my PWS and can confirm widespread ponding on roads within minutes of precip onset. @NWSChicago
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Caught three good lightning flashes in Huntsville today. Two upwards, one downward. The first of the upwards was a rare upward positive flash. The negative upward came only several minutes later, indicating that the charge structure changed quickly. Slow-mo is 20x slower.
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Burst of CG lightning over Huntsville yesterday evening. This is 500 FPS video, slowed down 20x. The 2nd CG had 5-6 ground terminations!
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Supercells engage in a behavior called "anting" where they deliberately provoke colonies of storm chasers into spraying formic acid as a defense mechanism. This helps the supercell eliminate or repel parasites that live in its inflow.
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500 FPS video of the CG photo I shared earlier. A different return stroke triggered the upwards before the CG in the video occurred. Note that the audio is from a similar flash in 2023. This flash was a bit softer since the peak current appeared low (but cont. current was not!)
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Incredible CG in Huntsville at 12:16 AM last night. This is my first good DSLR capture of a lightning strike. It strikes through the upslope fog hugging Monte Sano. Look really closely and you'll see faint upward leaders from the towers there that initiated before the CG.
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Big crawler flash lights up Huntsville at 11:20 PM CDT. The same flash also dropped some powerful CGs off to the west. Negative leaders below cloud base, positive leaders above. Video shown in real-time and then 1/20 real-time.
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Mammatus clouds around sunset near Springfield, IL. Captured by Sue Taylor, shared with permission.
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The Lightning Hunter retweeted
Apr 26
INSANE cloud to ground lightning strikes earlier in DFW (📍Euless, Texas). The first photo is my absolute favorite. It's one of my best lightning shots #txwx
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These must have been the anvil-to-ground -CGs I saw in NLDN data last night. I was hoping someone was having a look.
I'd choose this over the conga lines 100/100 times.
Apr 27
The lightning last night was epic in its own right, but seeing tons of bolts thrown 50 miles out in front of the storm was wild! ⚡️
#dfwwx #txwx
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The Lightning Hunter retweeted
It's about to get VERY active in the severe weather department across the central and southern U.S.
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Upward flash from the WAAY and WAFF towers in Huntsville at 6:50:20 PM CDT. There were a couple others before this one, but they were obscured.
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Weird lack of stratiform lightning with the big MCS in the upper Midwest right now.
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Looking at GLM data now, looks like a few very big megaflashes within a large stratiform generally devoid of lightning.
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The Lightning Hunter retweeted
Going back and looking at some of my footage of the barrage positive lightning strikes that occurred near Hopedale, IL as the storm was about to cross over the warm front. An abnormal amount of an uptick in these strikes occurred over about 5-10 minutes. I slowed down a few. Very quick strikes.
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I vividly remember my first upward flash. It was so bright... instantly knew what it was. As bright as it was, the thunder was just this soft pitter patter. Without a return stroke, there wasn't anything to really drive the shockwave that makes CG lightning go boom.
Apr 4
Oh my god it finally happened even if it’s shitty iPhone quality I’m going to cry
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