Al Key

I’m a storm chaser. A true, died-in-the-wool, card-carrying storm chaser. Have been since around 1970.

My father, a meteorologist in the Air Force, got me interested in the ’60s.

I’m fanatical. If a storm passes through or near Denton County and I don’t meet, greet and record it, I feel I have somehow let myself down. I’ll literally drive hundreds of miles in search of storm, maybe tornado or lightning photos.

Lightning has become my passion. No two bolts are the same. There is an element of danger. Not many people do it. And, there is usually lightning in every thunderstorm, even if there is not severe weather such as tornadoes or hail.

DRC/Al Key

Staff photographer Al Key captures this cloud-to-cloud lightning over north Denton recently.

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What you see here are throwbacks. That’s right, throwbacks — as in not good enough to make the cut. All of the photos on this page lost out to a “better” lightning photo that was published in the Denton Record-Chronicle the next day after being shot or shortly thereafter.

So what happens to No. 2?

It sits in an envelope if it is a negative, or resides in a file folder if it is an electronic image, just begging to be given its chance to shine. It hopes for a follow-up story or some beckoning reason to become one of the honored few, the proud, the published.

It hopes that it will not be further displaced by future storms that will surely contain even more lightning pictures that won’t make the starting lineup.

So here they are: The best of the No. 2’s from my “recent” storm chases (i.e., this century). I don’t exactly remember when each one was shot, but I can tell you everything else about each photo — from what the exposure was to what road in which county and how each image was formed.

So enjoy these photos for what they are — the losers.

Try not to look negatively on them because they weren’t dramatic enough initially. Sympathize with their plight. Don’t look at them as second best. Think of them as “patient” — just waiting for the “appropriate” time to be introduced.

Think about the sight, the smell, the feel of a thunderstorm as it steamrolls across the blackland prairie below the Red River Valley.

Love it or hate it, it is hard not to acknowledge the impact that weather has in our North Central Texas life.

Hey, everybody loves to watch a thunderstorm roll in — well, almost everybody.

AL KEY can be reached at 940-566-6893. His e-mail address is akey@dentonrc.com .