A late-season winter storm brought snow to the high deserts of northern Arizona. An early morning check of weather conditions indicated that Sedona airport (KSEZ) had reported snow. And satellite data showed an area of fog in the Verde Valley, including Sedona. This had the potential to be a great opportunity for photographs.
The early morning visit to Sedona was worth the effort. And the trip home included a stop at the recently re-opened Indian Gardens Cafe in Oak Creek Canyon.
This is the second year in a row in which the North American Monsoon has failed to deliver its normal weather to Arizona. The monsoon had a late start in July with only a few isolated rain events early in the month and the main event starting around the third week of July. But even that faltered after a week and the final week of July was dry.
August was even worse with no measurable precipitation until after mid-month and even then the amounts were light. The National Weather Service in Flagstaff has posted some climate data for the area for August. It was the hottest August and the 2nd driest on record in Flagstaff and most of the west experienced similar conditions (Figure 1; Figure 2;Â Figure 3).
Photographing summer monsoon storms has been a challenge this year because there were so many dry periods. Even so, there are always interesting weather events and clouds that make it worthwhile. So here is a collection of the most interesting weather photographs from this summer.
A time-lapse movie shows that the ducks are more interesting than the convection.
Full rainbows eluded me this year butI did manage to photograph a rainbow segment.
As with rainbows, lightning was elusive this year. It was typically a case of being in the wrong place on the wrong day and at the wrong time. But I did get lucky with the following image.
And when there is no lightning and no rainbow, one can be content with the sunset.
Perhaps 2021 will be a normal monsoon year.
The last few days have provided opportunities for photographing lightning and moonbows. A moonbow, of course, is nothing more than a rainbow that is lit by the light of the moon rather than the sun. Although not rare, I’ve never had an opportunity to photograph a moonbow before. Even better, it was a double moonbow. And, to make it even better, there was lightning to go along with it.
A short time-lapse video is available. The video covers a period of 24 minutes compressed into 8 seconds.
The previous evening I was also shooting lightning in Sedona and was able to capture this beautiful cloud-to-ground lightning bolt adjacent to Cathedral Rock. (Minor problem: it wasn’t in sharp focus. Oh, well.)
The North American Monsoon continues across the Southwest bringing thunderstorms almost every day to northern Arizona. Rainfall amounts across much of the state have been well above average with Flagstaff receiving 4.5″ compared to a normal of 2.6″ in the month of July,
Of course, all this storminess brings opportunities for photographing interesting skies, lightning, and sunsets.
I was heading towards the South Rim of Grand Canyon when I decided that Wupatki National Monument might be more interesting. Although there wasn’t much in the way of lightning there was a nice sunset with a thunderstorm in the distance.
Another day brought a great sunset with beams of light illuminating the inner canyon.
I found myself in Sedona a few nights later hoping for lightning at sunset. The lightning was there but clouds to the west blocked the light of the setting sun. This spectacular bolt of anvil lightning traveled horizontally for a great distance before terminating above Cathedral Rock.
Early afternoon cumulus development near Marshall Lake on Anderson Mesa resulted in this small cumulus cloud producing a very photogenic shadow.
And, later that afternoon, we found ourselves at Lower Lake Mary watching another cumulus cloud develop to our east and reflected in the water.
I’ve been trying to capture evening thunderstorms and lightning (image) over Grand Canyon with a crescent moon illuminating the interior the canyon. Not very easy to do. I was able to get the moonlit canyon. And there was lightning but it was over 100 km away and resulted in teeny, tiny bolts in the phots. Well, I’ll just keep trying.
The North American Monsoon is now in full swing across the southwest and Arizona. This brings thundershowers almost every day to northern Arizona along with a chance to photograph lightning.
I have been photographing lightning for a long time with my earliest images using an old manual focus/exposure camera with film. Those were challenging because you had to guess at the exposure (although there were many fine articles online even then on camera settings). There was no way to do a quick check of the exposure to see if it was good. On the other hand, we usually shot in the evening or nighttime hours using long exposures of several seconds or more so you were usually pretty certain whether you had the shutter open at the right moment.
With digital, everything has changed. You can instantly check your image and see whether or not you captured the lightning. There are several lightning triggers on the market that will fire the shutter for you.
Here are some recent images taken in several different locations over the past few weeks.
These were mainly in-cloud flashes so the best option was to leave the shutter open for 10-15 seconds. The longer exposure also allows some stars to appear in the image.
Lightning near Kendrick Peak in northern Arizona.
