Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The mother of all mothership clouds

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Click for full panorama. We've had a few thunderstorms over the past few days on the Space Coast. The best was this one on Friday, which formed a really nice shelf cloud by the time it reached me on the Pineda Causeway.

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This kind of formation is pretty typical of Central Florida storms, but it's one of the best I've seen this year.

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As I watched the storm move over the Indian River, I saw a few flashes of lightning. It wasn't frequent enough to get a photo, though. The storm formed in the center of the state and moved eastward, but it was losing strength as it neared the shore.

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By the time the wind picked up and it started to sprinkle, the storm had lost most of its power. There wasn't much rain and only a few rumbles of thunder.

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I was trying to shoot this heron as it perched on the bank with the storm in the background, but I spooked it.

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This guy named George had been fishing but closed up his van and took cover as the storm approached.

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On Thursday, there was some lightning activity around sunset. I set out in front of Florida Today to capture some lightning, backdropped by a setting sun.

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The storm dissipated, and I came up empty.

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But then early Friday morning -- as a continuation of the storms that formed Thursday night -- I noticed some electricity in the air just before I had planned to go to bed. Instead, I ventured to the parking lot of this Baptist church, which is within walking distance of my apartment. I hung out with the police, who were using the lot to park while watching for speeding vehicles at 1:30 a.m., and took this long exposure.

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