Nature’s Light Shows

Last night we had a few nice supercells pass through north east of town. The lightening was constant, and beautiful. Quite a bit of hail was reported from these storms, most marble-to-quarter sized. The local storm reports also mention heavy rain and wind damage.

I spent about a half hour standing outside in a quiet neighborhood street at around 10:30p last night, trying to get a nice shot of these storms. They all looked awesome on my little LCD, but when I got home I was severely disappointed in the lack of detail. Where I saw dramatically silhouetted billowing clouds with crackling lightening flashing between them, all that came through in the photos is a vague blue glow and a few dim bolts. I think the light pollution from the bright sodium street lights in my chosen location was just a bit too much, plus it seems that I probably left the shutter open too long, and what was a bright bolt on a dark cloud, over time, is saturated out into less and less detail.

Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get more chances as the fall storm season rolls around. For the fun of it, I added a gallery for Sky Shots on this site, and I’ll update it with new shots from dog walks and random afternoon clouds.