On the evening of Friday., May 7th, 2010 I noticed a line of severe thunderstorms on the radar making their way across Ohio via the Lake Erie shoreline. These storms were pumping out a ton of electricity so I decided to go to my favorite spot with a milkshake and try to record some cloud to ground lightning strikes. Not only did I successfully record some great lightning strikes, but I was able to capture the giant shelf cloud that was being pushed in front of the supercell thunderstorm that tracked all the way from NW Ohio to the Cleveland area. This particular storm had a history of producing tornadoes but didn’t do so around the Cleveland area. However, the illuminated shelf cloud was incredible to see. Below is a video of the lightning in action but before you watch that, here are a couple screen captures from the video I recorded.

You can barely make out the shelf cloud to the left hand side

Shelf cloud starting to encroach on downtown Cleveland

My favorite picture clearly illustrating the shelf cloud in action

Very ominous roll cloud moving through downtown