Lightning |
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Several thundercells blew across Santa Barbara County early in the morning of August 30. I drove up to San Marcos Pass to photograph the lightning from the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains.
Lightning strikes on the far side of San Rafael Peak over a span of 28 minutes.
You can buy framed prints of this photograph.
Another thundercell blew across Lompoc.
Time lapse: the speed of the action has been increased by 60x.
The Eye of Sauron.
Electric Eye: Different perspective of the lightning storm.
A thundercell drifted down the Santa Barbara Channel on the evening of November 12, 2003. I drove west to Gaviota to a turnout off of Highway 101 overlooking the channel. The two lights are a pair of oil production platforms.
A streamer reached upward toward the sky from
the platform on the right, but failed to connect with a lightning
bolt.
The thundercell drifted out of the channel and
into the open ocean.
Whenever I see the flash of lightning outside, I grab my camera and a tripod and go out in the rain. featuring my photographs of lightning taken in California and Arizona.
Put a copy of the Lightning 2011 Calendar in your Lulu.com shopping cart for $16.95.
Lightning from a monsoon storm in Phoenix, Arizona in July 1999.
At three in the morning on September 2, 1997, a lightning storm
drifted down the Santa Barbara Channel. I went out to the cliff
in Isla Vista to shoot some pictures. The lightning was striking
several miles offshore when I arrived. Directly overhead I could
see the stars shining.
The lightning strikes moved quickly to my right and the time
between the strikes and the thunder got down to just a couple of
seconds. Sometimes the thunder could be heard ripping the sky
directly overhead. Some of the bolts were so bright that my
vision shut down completely for a couple of seconds except for
the purple afterimage of the bolt.
This lightning bolt convinced me to get back to the car. Note how
lightning is entering the picture at several points along the top
as well as from the right. The foreground is lit up from the
front, so some of the lightning passed directly overhead. I only
had to wait a couple of seconds to hear the thunder ripping the
sky over my head after the bolt struck. This is the most
foolishly dangerous picture I ever shot.
The rain arrived fast. I packed up my equipment and headed for the car. Before I got to my car, lightning struck the ground beyond it. It was hitting all around at that point.
I headed up the coast a few miles and shot some
more pictures of the lightning over Ellwood Pier. Then the rain
came again, so I headed for home.
The rain had already stopped when I got home
about five minutes later, but the lightning was still striking
between my house and the mountains. I set up the camera in the
back yard and got some shots of the cumulonimbus illuminated from
inside by lightning.
After several minutes, the storm had gone over
the mountains into the Santa Ynez Valley. It was too far away to
hear the thunder anymore. Occasionally, a bolt would arc out of
the cloud and down a few miles to the ground. One bolt shot out
of the cloud up toward space.
This was taken at an elevation of about 9,000 feet in the Inyo
Mountains. The Sierra Nevada is visible on the far side of Owens
Valley. The lightning was striking at the bottom of the valley,
over a mile below. The multiple strike bolts lasted long enough
for me to catch this daytime lightning photo.
A thundercell drifted down the Santa Barbara Channel on the evening of October 11, 1991. I drove west to Gaviota to a turnout off of Highway 101 overlooking the channel. The two lights are a pair of oil production platforms.
You can buy framed prints or greeting cards of this photograph.
An
enormous lightning bolt struck a peak in the Saline Range above
my Saline Valley campsite in April 1988. The storm came directly
through camp. For a long time the sound of thunder did not stop.
Another bolt struck before the thunder from the last bolt had
ended.
This was taken just south of Mono Lake, looking toward Tioiga
Pass. The small hill in the foreground was hit by numerous
lightning strikes. The multiple strike lightning bolts lasted
long enough to photograph in daytime.
This
was taken from my bedroom window.
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