SUPERBAD SUPER-BEAUTIFUL STORMS: CHAD COWAN

CHAD COWAN

Badass weather can be a beautiful thing! -- As long as it’s captured by photographers and filmmakers that know how to stay safe, of course.

For the past 10 years, photographer Chad Cowan has been on a major mission to chase and shoot the most extreme and violent weather on the planet -- powerful supercell thunderstorms. He is obsessed!

Cowan has driven over 150,000 miles in his quest, chasing hundreds of these mega-storms and recording them in high-definition. He’s compiled the best shots into a short film, entitled Fractal.

Watch it! You’ll see spectacular lightning, thunderstorms, dramatic sunsets and sunrises, all of which will grip you in awe and perhaps a bit of “armchair terror.”

Supercell thunderstorms form when the ratios moisture, wind shear, instability, and lift in the atmosphere reach trigger proportions.

“Supercell thunderstorms are a manifestation of nature's attempt to correct an extreme imbalance,” explains Cowan. “The ever ongoing effort to reach equilibrium, or entropy, is what drives all of our weather, and the force with which the atmosphere tries to correct this imbalance is proportional to the gradient. In other words, the more extreme the imbalance, the more extreme the storm.” His photos help tell that story.

The collection of timelapses in Fractal was gathered over the last six years in a stretch of midwest country, from Texas to North Dakota.

"Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls, and so on to viscosity." - Meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson ("Weather Prediction by Numerical Process." Cambridge University Press, 1922)

Richardson’s quote sums up perfectly what Cowan has come to realize about weather and storms. “On each scale level from synoptic-scale, which covers areas the size of multiple states, all the way down to micro-scale, which could be an area as small as your backyard, the fluid which we call air abides by the same universal physical laws of nature and thus acts in a very similar manner and patterns,” Cowan explains.

The fractal phenomenon is fascinating!

Cowen explains in more detail: “A cold front, for example, is a phenomenon which is widely understood to mean a large scale line of advancing cold air, hundreds of miles long, along which supercell thunderstorms sometimes form. Within these smaller storm-scale environments, something called a rear-flank gust front forms on the southern end of the low pressure area of the mesocyclone, where the rain cooled air wraps around. This is effectively a storm's cold front.”

“The cool air is more dense than the warm air, and because of this, advances into the region of lower density, just like the larger cold front on which the storm formed.”

“The stunning supercell storm structure we see is along these relatively small, storm-scale cold fronts. This is what forms the "hook" on radar. Here, just as with the larger scale weather systems, the wedge of denser cool air at the surface meets the warm, moist, buoyant air in front of a storm, forcing it aloft and through the cap where the potential energy is realized. Given the right conditions, this development can be explosive.”

“While Richardson's quote is more regarding turbulence than thermodynamics, his theory from nearly 100 years ago that our atmosphere behaves as a fractal has turned out to be spot on,” Cowan advises -- hence the film title “Fractal.”

“A ‘top down’ transfer of energy and behavior occurs, resulting in a Russian nesting doll of smaller scale systems that bear a striking resemblance to the larger.”

Fractal began as a personal project -- Cowan wanted to see and learn more about the life-cycles of these monster storms. Then he became obsessed. He aimed to document as many photogenic supercells as he could, in as high a resolution as possible. He wanted to be able to share the majestic beauty that comes alive in the skies above America's Great Plains every Spring.

“After more than 100,000 miles on the road and tens of thousands of shutter clicks later, this is the result,” he says proudly. He hopes you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it. We loved it!

Fractal is a beautiful film, not only because of Cowan’s gorgeous cinematography, but also for it editing, edited by his good friend Kevin X Barth and it’s angelic majestic soundtrack by Arvo Part. A longer version of Fractal is now in the works.

Cowan loves teaching people about storms and severe weather and how to safely document them. He often invites people to accompany him on a storm chase. If you are interested, he claims June is by far the best time to go out, as the storms are more photogenic and slow moving than any other month. Check it out here.

Cowan's photos have been published around the globe and his work has appeared in major motion pictures, and on most national news outlets. In 2010, his 'Icemaker' photo of the supercell that dropped the largest hailstone ever recorded on earth came in second place in a National Geographic photo contest. In 201, his Dodge City tornado photo placed 4th in the All About Photo International contest out of more than 3,000 entrants.

See more beautiful storms in Incredible Art Storms and sip something from 10 Crazy-Good Cocktail Storms.

Read more about Beautiful Danger all this week on BeautifulNow, including 10 Beautiful Dangerous Places to Visit Now, Crazy. Badass. Beautiful Climbs, The Art & Design of Blowing Up Evil and Deadly Beauty Now. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.

Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!

Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.

IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Chad Cowan. Still from “Fractal.” Short film by Chad Cowan.
2. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Sunset Storm.”
3. Image: by Chad Cowan. Still from “Fractal.” Short film by Chad Cowan.
4. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Bolt From the Blue.”
5. Image: by Chad Cowan. “The Chase.”
6. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Electric Storm.”
7. Image: by Chad Cowan. Still from “Fractal.” Short film by Chad Cowan.
8. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Supercell Mountain.”
9. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Phantom Flex-ing on some lightning at 1,000 frames per second in 4k with Dustin Farrell.”
10. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Sunset Lightning.”
11. Image: by Chad Cowan. Still from “Fractal.” Short film by Chad Cowan.
12. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Independence Day.”
13. Image: by Chad Cowan. “UFO.”
14. Image: by Chad Cowan. “Sandhill Corkscrew.”