Friday, June 19th was a very wild day of weather in the Orlando area, and it was my first day of my June trip to Disney staying at the campground cabins in Ft. Wilderness. I figured I could tell some of the tale in photos, though Disney World didn't get the worst of the weather that Orlando and other suburbs got that day. It was still a wet and wild and ever-changing weather day. I arrived around 3:30pm, checked into my cabin, picked up my golf cart, unpacked, went down to Trails' End for dinner, then headed out to the parks. I chose Magic Kingdom for that shortened evening, as I could drive my cart down to the boat dock and take the boat over. It had been clear all morning and afternoon, but clouds were building in the distance, and the day had already been unique in setting Orlando's record temp for that day in history at 101 degrees. I decided to be safe and brought my RX10 camera as it is weather sealed and I could get caught in a rainshower without panicking. Stepping into Magic Kingdom around 7:15pm, it was still not raining, but clouds were looming all around and some distant thunder was becoming audible. I took this shot of the castle in fading grey light with clouds beginning to loom: Things go downhill very quickly in Florida - and thunderstorms can grow very intense from what looks like a normal cloudy day. 15 minutes after the castle shot, I was hitting Frontierland, and looked across the rivers to the Liberty Square area, seeing VERY grey stormy skies - I lined up along the boardwalks on the river for a shot, and caught some lightning streaking through the grey clouds, even while sunset colors were trying to peek through: 20 minutes of fairly hard rain came, and I hid out by the covered porch next to the restrooms of the Frontierland train station. Once the rains stopped, the thunder was still booming in the distance, but appeared to have passed the Kingdom...there was still a light rain, but not enough to stop you from walking around. The sun even managed to poke back out a little after 8pm for some golden sunset color on the castle: So I started wandering as the sunset's last glow was warming up from the west and the storm clouds were still looming to the east. I got to Fantasyland, and while walking east, I was noticing just a crazy neon pumkin orange glow on every building...the most vivid color you can imagine. Turning around behind me to look west, I saw why: It was almost 8:30pm, the sun was below the horizon, but was throwing up the craziest orange colors, and some cool crepuscular rays. The view to the east was very different - at the very same moment, I turned around and shot the view to the east: Those are called 'mammatus' clouds. And they don't usually mean anything friendly. Typically they are seen before and after tornadoes, and severe thunderstorms with highly unsettled skies. Though the bad part of the storm had missed us, I had a feeling somewhere in Orlando was having a bad day. Those mammatus clouds were spinning and moving very quickly. Stopping along the train tracks on the path from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland, I decided to snap a shot of the orange-tinged mammatus clouds over Space Mountain's spire as the evening purples and blues settled in: After hitting Tomorrowland and a ride on the Peoplemover, the weather was looking a bit meaner and it was beginning to rain harder, off and on. I decided that was enough to call it an earlier night, even though MK was open until 2am - so I headed back for the boats to the campground, hoping they were running in that weather. The lightning was JUST far enough away that they had started running the Bon Voyage boats again, but the surrey-top boats were still halted. I jumped aboard the boat, sitting in the open back section, and noticed the excellent electrical show going on over the Grand Floridian. I posted this in the firework thread for fun, but it fits here too to tell the rest of the weather story. It's definitely not advisable to photograph lightning when it's within eye and earshot while sitting in a metal boat on the water - but Disney was willing to run the boats and that tells me they must have been confident enough that the lightning was far enough away and headed the other direction. I was strictly handheld in a moving boat, and shooting while raining, but still managed to catch some of that lightning show: I concluded the metal-boat-on-water ride under lightning skies with a ride in an electric cart under tall trees in the rain...every clap of thunder makes your exit hole clench up in that situation! Once back at the cabin, I caught the 11pm local news, and just as I had suspected, the weather day was much less pleasant in some parts of the Orlando suburbs - quarter-size hail, winds topping 85MPH, bad flooding in the streets, several roofs torn off, trees knocked down over cars and on top of houses. Here's a local news link of their report for the day: http://www.baynews9.com/content/new...s/articles/cfn/2015/6/19/orlando_weather.html As a Floridian, I'm well accustomed to this kind of weather. But it's still always fun and exciting to try to catch some of it in photographs!
Very cool shots Justin. I really like the ones of Beast's Castle and Space Mountain, stunning images. Thanks for making a story out of them!
Thanks guys. It was one of those days - while there, the lightning was a bit worrying at times, the rain hard at times, didn't really 'do' much ride wise (HM, Peoplemover)...yet all the cool weather and sky colors made up for it and made it memorable. Just walking around the park and seeing a bright flash and hearing several hundred people around you all go 'Oooooh!' at the same time was fun!
