Evan and I sat at a location just southeast of Willcox for a solid hour and
a half photographing two storms. The first one over Willcox was prolific
with lightning early on, and I managed to capture a few nice
cloud-to-ground flashes (including the one posted here). A second storm
formed to our southwest which was moving northwest and was a much more
prolific lightning producer for us to photograph. By sunset, this storm
weakened and became less electrical. Unfortunately, we did not end up with
the killer sunset colors like we had hoped, but it was still a fun shoot!
Evan and I started the day with a 3-mile out and back hike up Brown
Mountain late morning/midday as temperatures rose through the mid to upper
90s. After the hike we ventured east on I-10 to Benson then onward through
the northern Dragoon Mountains to the Wilcox Basin where we ended up
photographing several decent storms with lightning that popped up in the
basing between the Chiricahua and Dos Cabezas Mountains to the east and the
Dragoon Mountains to the west. We ended up with several decent
cloud-to-ground lightning flashes, especially around the Pearce, AZ area.
Unfortunately, the storms did not survive past sunset with the good
lightning ending before the good sunset light started. Nevertheless, it was
a fun shoot!
Evan and I started the day with a leisurely drive south through Sonoita
along Hwy 83 then across the beautiful wine country of Elgin, AZ then over
to Whetstone. We briefly monitored weak showers/attempts at storms form off
the Huachucas, until giving that up and heading to Benson for a break and
some lunch. We then set our sights on the Willcox area where we came
across several nice dust devils, including one which came right up on us
(Evan has some cool video of this!) at the Cochise exit of I-10. We finally
chased some storms down coming toward I-10 in the San Simon area. We sat
at a location south of San Simon for up to two hours watching several
storms congeal into one area of bigger storms until ultimately dissipating
all together. We had a really nice looking shelf cloud develop from the
southern storm that came north off Dos Cabezas Mountains. We stopped
briefly for a rainbow shot at the Bowie interchange and made an attempt at
photographing new storms right after sunset down on the other side of Dos
Cabezas Mountains... only to have those storms stop producing lightning as
we got all ready to set up.
Attached to this post is an image of lightning striking the north slope of
the Santa Teresa Mountains near Fort Thomas, Arizona during the late afternoon hours
Evan and I started the day observing initial showers from Windy Point on
the Catalina Highway above Tucson. After those moved off to the west,
there was nothing else to go after, so we made a brief stop for ice cream
and stopped by the hotel real quick then set off for the northwest toward
Casa Grande. We encountered quite a bit of dust along I-10 near Casa Grande
from strong south winds. After tracking a weak shower that rolled over us
along Hwy 387 close to sunset we noticed new development back to the east
which was also tracking to the west-southwest. We found a spot along
Highway 87 with widely scattered saguaro cactus for a nice foreground for
lightning. The lightning was fairly distant and rather infrequent as far as
cloud-to-ground flashes went, but we did manage to capture a few, albeit
somewhat soft (not perfectly tack-sharp focus thanks to the wind).
July 18th was slated as a down day as we decided to venture up toward
Summerhaven and enjoy the mountain drive up the Catalina Highway. After a
lunch at the Sawmill Run restaurant, we drove back down into Tucson and
decided to photograph in the Saguaro National Park (The Rincon/east Unit).
We did have some interesting clouds to incorporate into some shots, but the
sun only made sporadic appearances with good light. Later that night we
noticed storms moving southwest out of the Globe area moving toward the
southeast Phoenix metro with tons of lightning. We decided to make a run
at this despite being so late after 11pm. We intercepted what was left of
the storms near Sacaton hoping for lightning with the Santan Mountains in
the background. The lightning activity was very low, but I did manage to
get one decent frame of some non-cloud to ground lightning over the
mountains.
First day out chasing with Evan Bookbinder. After picking him up at the
airport and a quick lunch in Tempe, we watched storms form well off to our
north/northwest from South Mountain on the south side of Phoenix. We were
hoping for a dust storm to roll into the northern part of Phoenix, but that
never panned out as the convective activity was shifting well west of the
city. We high tailed it west on I-10 and storms kept redeveloping west,
resulting in us playing catch up all the way to the early evening hours.
Our best photography of the day came from the I-10/US60 interchange east
of Quartzsite as a storm to our west developed a nice core and
lightning...but the lightning activity was on a downtrend as we finally
made our stop. We did manage to capture a couple of the last
cloud-to-ground flashes...then focused on the amazing sunset colors before
calling it a day and making the long drive back to Tucson.
A surge of mid level moisture was moving west from New Mexico which aided
in the early eruption of storms southeast of Tucson. I tried to photograph
lightning from the initial early afternoon convection in the Sonoita area,
but it soon became very messy with too many storms and rather low cloud
bases by Arizona standards... which is actually not all that ideal for
lightning photography. I finally gave up on that stuff and headed to Benson
to reset and figure out what to do next. I decided to head to Kitt Peak,
but when I got there, the road to Kitt Peak was closed at 4pm! That was
extremely frustrating and disappointing, because it would have yielded
great views of storms developing over the Tohono O'odham Nation. I did
drive southwest on the Ajo Highway toward Sells, but I turned around given
the fact that the terrain down there was rather thick with tall mesquite
brush and much in the way of overlooks. I turned around, but in retrospect
should have continued on as storms just south of Sells really organized
into profuse lightning machines close to sunset. Instead, I drove around
Gates Pass Road checking that out for the first time. Some showers and
some isolated lightning developed between Tucson and Casa Grande, but
nothing really came of this stuff.
