Kevin Palmer

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  • I found myself camping in Eastern Montana after a day of chasing storms. As darkness fell, little green flickers of light started to emerge. At first I thought I was just seeing things. Normally fireflies are only found in the more wet and humid climates of the Midwest and Eastern US. I’ve previously photographed them in Illinois and Iowa. But the weather this year has been anything but normal on the Northern Plains. Excessive rainfall nearly every day over the last month has evidently caused fireflies (also called lightning bugs) to appear farther west than usual. As another round of thunderstorms approached they started to glow even more before wind shut them down for the night. The Tongue River near Miles City was running high and fast. In fact the water rose several inches while I was shooting this, lapping at my tripod. This is a composite image showing 30 minutes of firefly activity, combined with a single image of the lightning and stars.
    Montana Fireflies
  • Storms can either bring epic sunsets or none at all. It's all about the timing, and where you are in relation to the storm when the sun goes down. This severe MCS rolled through Miles City, Montana around 7pm. The rain slowly came to an end and a glow began to emerge in the west. I wasn't expecting much, but I found a place to wait (Spotted Eagle Lake) just in case something special happened. The sun only popped out for a couple minutes. But that was enough to light up the entire sky with intense orange and pink. A double rainbow appeared for 15 minutes, which was long enough to allow me to shoot a time lapse of it fading away. The wind died down for just a moment and the reflection in the lake made an almost perfect circle. Even though the long drive wouldn't get me home until after midnight, I'm glad I didn't leave early and miss out on this.
    Reflected Rainbow
  • This isolated supercell formed near Miles City out ahead of the advancing MCS. It barely moved at all while slowly organizing and developing a wall cloud.
    Montana Prairie Storm
  • Pirogue Island is a small island in the Yellowstone River near Miles City. The state park is only accessible for part of the year when the river is low enough to cross.
    Pirogue Island
  • It was an intimidating sight watching this monster barrel towards me. It’s amazing how something can be so beautiful and so destructive at the same time. Within minutes the sky changed from bright and sunny to black and the quiet turned into a roaring wind. This supercell first formed in Montana, before charging southeast along the Black Hills. Enhanced wind shear next to the mountains helped sculpt the clouds into this ominous structure. 2 tornadoes were reported, the first knocked down swaths of forest, while the second destroyed buildings farther east. Experts disagree on why exactly some storms appear green. But it is a good indication that a storm reaches high into the atmosphere and contains much precipitation, which often includes hail. At the time of this shot hail stones 3-4” in diameter were falling just a few miles away in downtown Rapid City. As much as I wanted to stay and time lapse this scene, I continued to flee south instead out of the damage path. I've found my windshield to be more effective when it stays in one piece.
    Ominous Green
  • I always like being the first person on a trail after a fresh snowfall. It's easy at Sand Ridge State Forest since there are 150 miles of trails and there usually aren't many visitors.<br />
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Date Taken: February 2, 2015
    Untouched
  • On this day a severe MCS (mesoscale convective system) roared across eastern Montana. Since I was out ahead of the storm near Miles City I had plenty of time to find an interesting place to watch it roll in. The Kinsey Bridge is a 4-span truss bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River. The single-lane bridge was built in 1907 and the poor condition made it unnerving to drive across. According to the National Bridge Inventory database, the Kinsey Bridge has a sufficiency rating of 56 out of 100 when it was last inspected. Just after 7PM the gust front passed overhead bringing with it strong winds, blowing dust, and heavy rain.
    Yellowstone River Shelf
  • Abiathar Peak glows shortly before sunset during a brief break in the snow. Snowflakes were in the air almost the entire time I was in Yellowstone National Park. Some of the best views in Yellowstone are found here in the remote northeast corner of the park. On the other side of the mountain is the small town of Cooke City, the highest in the Northern Rockies. It's hard to find a more isolated town in the winter. The closest city with more than 1,000 people is 110 miles away with a 2.5 hour drive. That doesn't include the frequent delays caused by herds of bison, who often travel on the road to conserve energy and avoid the deep snow in the Lamar Valley
    Abiathar Aglow
  • A partially eclipsed sun sets over the skyline of Saint Louis, Missouri. About 40 minutes before the sun set, it moved behind some thick clouds to the west. There was a small gap in between clouds, but it kept getting smaller. As the sun sank lower, the gap wasn't big enough to fit the entire disk of the sun. So I just shot the upper portion of the sun where the moon was. I had to time it just right, because this lasted only a few seconds. The sun looked like it would appear one more time, but it never did. <br />
To see the sun setting over the city skyline, I had to find a location a few miles northeast of the city, with enough height to see over the trees. The 100 foot high mound at Cahokia Mounds turned out to be the perfect place. 100 feet may not seem very high, but this mound was built entirely by hand over 1,000 years ago by an ancient Indian civilization. The base is as wide as the Great Pyramid of Giza and it took hundreds of years to build by hauling baskets of soil and clay. Dozens of mounds in the area are preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
    St. Louis Eclipse
  • The Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout Tower is just 25 miles west of Denver and has a great view of the city lights coming on. The fog and clouds quickly cleared out as it got darker.
    Denver At Twilight
  • The morning dawned bright and clear on top of Granite Butte. The sun doesn't make it above the horizon until after 8AM this time of year. When I arrived on the summit the evening before, visibility was limited to 50 feet. But now the freezing fog had settled into the valleys, trapped below an inversion layer. Underneath that fog is Montana's capital city of Helena. Between shooting meteors all night and keeping the wood burning stove going, I didn't get much sleep. But a sunrise like this makes it easy to wake up. The weather can be extremely harsh up here. It was at a pass 16 miles away where the coldest temperature in the US (outside of Alaska) was once measured at -70°F. While it wasn't quite that cold on this morning, I was still glad to have a fire lookout tower to stay in and escape from the nearly incessant wind.
    8:09 Sunrise
  • The Beartooth Highway is a 68 mile long road that starts in Red Lodge, Montana, and ends at the northeast entrance to Yellowstone. The steep, winding highway reaches elevations above 10,000 feet and is known for getting snow anytime of the year. Snow drifts up to 40 feet high were encountered earlier in the day. This shot was taken at 11PM when the moon was illuminating Pilot and Index Peaks. Resembling the Matterhorn in the Alps, Pilot Peak can be seen near the end of the highway outside of Cooke City. The twin stars of Gemini as well as the Beehive star cluster were setting behind the two peaks.
    Twin Peaks