Nature's fireworks
As I mentioned earlier, a severe thunderstorm pounded North Knoxville this afternoon. I had a bird's eye view of the storm from the parking garage downtown where I park for work, and I was able to capture several still frames of cloud-to-ground lightning from the videos I took with my digital camera. Here's the best one:
Here's what the storm looked like on radar at that very moment:
A wider, animated radar view can be found here. There are more lightning pics -- and other storm photos -- in my Flickr gallery, and several of those photos are highlighted on my photoblog.
UPDATE: One of my lightning videos is now on Flickr as well. You can see several lightning strikes, including the one pictured above.
P.S. The thunderstorm gave way to a beautiful sunset several hours later. Here are a couple photos of that:
Again, visit my Flickr gallery and my photoblog for more.
Nice picture, I hope it didn't take too long to get.
If you're not cool with people knowing which building you work in, you might want to sacrifice composition and crop the buildings.
Posted by: john | Jun 12, 2008 12:30:02 AM
I actually don't work in the same building I park at, so that's not really an issue.
As for how long it took to get the picture, it's a video screen grab, so it didn't take long at all; I just pointed the camera at the storm and shot video for several minutes, then extracted the "photo" when I got home. :) That's why it's only 320 pixels wide, but it's also why I was able to get numerous lightning pics in broad daylight (when long exposures are not an option).
Posted by: Brendan | Jun 12, 2008 7:04:03 AM
good strategy for that photo. I thought the resolution was due to cell-phone cam. Nice sunset too.
Posted by: john | Jun 12, 2008 9:21:20 AM
Brendan - did you manage to get any frames that show the lightning propagating from ground to cloud ? As I understand it, the lightning bolt itself goes up - just so fast that it's very difficult to capture it half-way through ...
Definitely a good picture of the strike !
Posted by: Alasdair | Jun 12, 2008 4:09:57 PM
Wish I knew where to access the radar map for Shenzhen, if there is one. We also had some impressive weather yesterday. Near five inches of rain at the airport, but probably more where I am - they closed the schools at lunch.
Posted by: Doc | Jun 14, 2008 2:13:11 AM
The thunderstorms have been great this year!
I got this one recently.
Posted by: Jim | Jun 17, 2008 6:34:29 PM