monsoon twenty fourteen: post one

This summer was a doozy.

Typically, monsoon season is July through August, with a sprinkling of rain here and there throughout the year. Monsoon usually means winds, clouds, thunder and lightening, haboobs(those crazy wind storms) and some occasional rain showers. This summer was a bit out of the ordinary. Terms like... record breaking, monsoon-of-the-century, never-before-reported, life threatening, "I've never seen anything like it"...were thrown around in a very believable way. It was crazy, I tell ya!

The first indication that it was going to be a summer of strange weather (although at the time we didn't know it was a signal and a sign of what was to follow) was the amazing lightening storm we had early in the summer. It started as just the sounds of far away low rolling thunder leading to the most impressive electrical sky show we have ever seen. It rolled consistently for an hour or two, with a light rain shower here and there. We were out on the back patio watching the sky performance until Chuck said, "the hair on my legs is standing up, we better go in." Literally, the electricity in the air was so strong, it was if a big switch was being flipped turning night into day, over and over again. It was tricky to get pictures, as the flashes weren't like regular lightening. Also, whether it was all the electricity in the air, the fact that the camera just couldn't focus fast enough or some other unexplained phenomenon going on that night, but the pictures were coming out with strips of light variations. It's hard to explain, you will notice in some of the many photos I have to show you.

I was literally keeping my finger on the shutter and allowing it to just repeatedly snap photos, trying to capture the unusual lightening. This is the dark sky. The bright light is the solar light in the yard. You will see it is most of the pictures.

 A little sky lit up.

These two show the strange effect that was happening. It was as if the camera was so confused as to how it should meter the sky going from night to day, in one quick flash of lightening.

Here is Chuck in the foreground. The sky is like a gray scale going from light to dark in an almost perfect gradation of color. This is just exactly how the camera was capturing the lightening show.

Now a series of photos just seconds between them. Keep in mind it was a pitch black night outside and the light you see is how bright it would get when the sky lit up.

You can see some of the lightening itself and the stormy sky.  Oh, and the solar yard light in the corner.

                 

 And then this happened. The sky lit up so brightly and I snapped just at the right moment. See what I mean about night to day? It was a little eerie actually.

We watched until about midnight and then went in. We could still hear the low rolling thunder and the sky was still lighting up. I just couldn't get over how bright and light the night was turning with just a flip of some far away switch.

Light on light off.