Back to Back Shelf Cloud Days as Evening Compact MCS Brings a TON of Lightning to Albany! - 7/1/26

BACK TO BACK SHELF CLOUD DAYS! After breaking the 10 month drought, now I'm treated to another shelf cloud not even 30 hours later locally?! That's fantastic. Yesterday I was in Little Falls and that MCS that came out of Canada was a powerful complex and even did produce a tornado far North of where I was but that one was more of storm complex I had to go out for. This on the other hand was a more, 5050 type of set up and less sure of as the day went on. There was a severe thunderstorm watch for Northern NY but it was iffy if we could get something in the Albany area. Now we did get some stuff in the late afternoon that came by. I was out and about and didn't have the camera gear with me but the cluster that did come by was nothing too special cause of the fact it was too messy. Lot of splitting cells and it just couldn't get itself sorted out to do much. I saw nothing by the Albany Airport as I was heading home. The thing I was focusing on was the small complex of storms over about 80 miles to the WNW of Albany by Rome, NY. That had some better chances but it would be coming in likely past Sunset and I was already heading to my Mom's for the evening. I did bring the camera gear just in case and also I had to do the overnight shift so we would see what would happen. Well, I completely got lost in the sauce of time and didn't keep up on the radar until realized "wait what about the storms" and sure enough the storms that made from Rome were just on the doorstep of Albany and there was an apparent outflow boundary that was surging ahead of the complex. That likely would be where if there was a shelf cloud on it, that is where it would be. I had no way to go out to my Rt 4 spot and make it in time so I had to go close by to Holy Names and I timed it just right to see the shelf cloud this had. It was pretty decently structured for what it was. Nothing what I saw the day before but a shelf is a shelf cloud and the lightning this was packing in the rain beyond this was so robust. It was clear on radar this was gonna be a hell of a lightning show if I could film it up. So I made the call to leave Holy Names and rush back home and set this up for a ASMR storm rain and lightning session. This was an awesome lightning display for the Albany area. There was some lightning that came through the clouds how I was filming as all I could do was point it up and hope something happened but this was robust lightning and thunder early on. The main part of the storm complex did go further North but this really rebuilt itself past the river and it became a big fat line of storms heading into New England. This looked like it was gonna be ending early but we had a ton of back building stratocumulus behind the MCS complex that allowed the lightning to also make a comeback and spread from the MCS and back into Albany. This produced some incredibly interesting lightning and thunder cause this actually lasted up to when I had to go to my work at 11pm. The rain stopped too so it all wrapped up perfectly for the most part. If I had time I may have gone out more to get the backside lightning even better but alas that was not in the cars but I can't complain cause this has been a fantastic 2 day stretch and we are in a good patter right now across NY State. This is out peak season after all so let's see what happens as time goes in into July where a lot of the best stuff happens up here usually. https://ko-fi.com/mightymuffins Couple bucks on my Ko-Fi also goes a long way and is always helps. :) Again don't have to if you don't want to. :)