Speaking of skies, we've been having our late-afternoon and early evening summer boomer pattern the past few weeks. After a long, hot, humid day of sun, the swamp heats up and starts forming big supercells, which then drift out from the swamp, right over the populated areas of South Florida, and out to sea. Some of these things get mean - last night's was particularly angry. Tornado warning went up at 6:30pm, severe thunderstorm warning from 6 - 8pm, and notice of hail and wind gusts to 65mph. Not to mention the unbelievable electrical activity of the storm - lightning flashing every 2-3 seconds throughout the storm (Florida isn't the 'Lightning Capital' of the U.S. for nuthin!). I wanted to try to shoot some lightning, but it was dusky out, so still too light to pull off multi-second shutters, which is the best chance to catch lightning in a photo. But I gave it a go just trying to use good timing and aperture priority to slow the shutter down more. After 12 shots, one struck dead center in front of me while I was in my backyard: While the surrounding scenery doesn't make it a wall-hanger-type lightning shot, I was happy to actually catch a bolt using fairly fast shutter speeds and just trying to time the strikes. The thunder that followed barely 1 second later made my skin rattle. I tried a few more, but the lightning was so close, and so furious, that I didn't feel safe standing on my wet deck in my backyard under the eave of my roof. I caught 5 strikes total in 60 shots...but this was the only one right in the clearing and not blocked.
Good catch Justin. Was going to do that last night, but we only had one strike while I was putting the kids to bed. The storm then decided to go north and south of our neighborhood.
