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storm gallery: July 24, 2009

July 24, 2009: The evening began with a farewell to my husband's brother - a memorial at Lone Cabbage Fish Camp in Cocoa, Florida. Then the skies opened. I had my camera, so when the gathering was over, I sought out the storm. This was one of the best nights I've seen for lightning in a long time here. Share

Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image, or view these photos as a gallery. From the gallery pages, click the "up" arrow to return to this index.

072409-01 072409-02 072409-04
A beautiful sunset coincided with severe storms to the north of my location, the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp in west Cocoa, Florida. The storm cluster became more vigorous as it slowly edged closer, as seen over the St. John's River. Pretty storms also were forming farther west.
072409-05 072409-06 072409-07
Storms to the northwest over the St. John's River. A gazing ball, a feature of the Lone Cabbage dock, is juxtaposed with the storm. Here's a look at the northern storm's anvil.
072409-09 072409-10 072409-11
The sunset and storms provided a classic Florida scene as this airboat tried to get going at the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp. Though the storm had an outflow feature - a budding shelf cloud - it was vigorous on radar and had a severe warning. Lightning sparked as darkness fell by the boat ramp on S.R. 520.
072409-12 072409-13 072409-14
More bolts spring from the approaching storm. To me, the fat, bright bolt suggests the drifting of the return strokes ... or maybe it's just the photography. I loved how the lightning illuminated the structure of the cloud.
072409-15 072409-16 072409-18
More lightning, getting closer. Lightning reflected in the St. John's River. I love the reflection of the lightning in the water. I think this is my favorite photo from this stage of the evening. This is full-frame, not cropped.
072409-19 072409-20 072409-21
The lightning is so bright, it's overexposed the frame, but it's still interesting. Branchy and beautiful. Intense strokes as the storm approaches ...
072409-22 072409-23 072409-24
This bolt was not quite in frame, but I included it here to show its intensity and proximity. For an instance, it created daylight! A crawler to the west. The rain came and I took a break. As it lightened, I attempted to capture the developing crawlers. This picture needed a little help as I tried to eliminate the raindrops that were on the lens.
072409-25 072409-26 072409-27
This one's kind of mysterious. Moving on to Rockledge, Florida - the south-moving storm produced crawlers and more. I left the raindrops on this image. Despite the raindrops, this is still pretty nifty.
072409-28 072409-29 072409-30
A tree of lightning, almost. More crawlers. Now that's what I'm talkin' about!
072409-31 072409-32 072409-33
More flash and bang. Lightning and power lines. I moved a bit south, but still in Rockledge.
072409-34 072409-35 072409-36
Check out the purples. The light streaks on the bottom are from passing traffic. More great color and light - crawler above, traffic below. Lots of in-cloud flashes illuminated the sky, along with the occasional crawler.
072409-37 072409-38 072409-39
A branch here, a branch there... Another nice crawler! The light show started to slow down as 11 p.m. EST neared, but still, there were some "wow" crawlers.
072409-40 072409-41 072409-42
These just seemed to rip across the sky. That's Harvey's Groves in the foreground. At this point, there were several minutes between crawlers, so this was my last shot of the night. And what a night!

2009 reports and photos

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