Amazing pictures show idyllic World Heritage Site engulfed by menacing storm that triggered 100,000 lightning strikes
An umbrella would be pretty useless if you were caught out in this
A SERIES of stunning photographs captures a gigantic storm creeping its way closer to idyllic windmills in the Netherlands.
The snaps taken by weather fanatic Jonas Piontek were taken to contrast the serenity of the World Heritage Site with the power of Mother Nature.
Jonas, 21, a student from Germany, stayed up all night with his friends hunting for a perfect viewpoint to see the storm — which had earlier caused over 100,000 lightning strikes in France — after trying to predict its movements.
He eventually settled on the ideal location near the windmills in Kinderdijk, Netherlands, to witness the amazing shelf of clouds make its way towards him.
Jonas said: “We decided to stay awake and wait for the arrival of the storm.
“We found the windmills of Kinderdijk, a United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site, where we could get in position just in time.
“The incredible scene was overwhelming for all of us and everyone was completely freaking out about the scene we were just witnessing.
“At first we stood there, completely emotionless, because nobody believed what was heading towards us.
“At the next moment we must have woken up the whole city with our cries of cheer.
“This spot along with the arriving storm completely blew my mind.
“It was like we were standing in between two different worlds, having the warm sun behind us while witnessing a severe looking storm moving straight towards us.”
According to Jonas, shelf clouds are not that rare but it’s incredibly difficult to predict the perfect spot with which you can photograph them in all their majesty.
He said: “It was very unique, usually strong storms occur around afternoon or late evening but this one arrived with perfect timing at sunrise.
“This together with the amazingly photogenic spot had created a true once-in-a-lifetime scene, that none of us will forget anytime soon.
“We knew that the storm was a cycling super-cell and they usually can become really severe, but we realised quite soon that the blue-shimmering core would miss us by just a few kilometres to our north.
“The strong winds that can occur beneath such a big shelf cloud hit us at one point and almost knocked my camera over, but fortunately this was all we had to go through.”
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