More storms! Yeah!

Innisfail, Sunday August 2nd 2009. This is a view after the storm came over, dumped a whole load of rain and made some noise. Taken from the Anthony Henday Campground while waiting for some friends to return from the wildlife park. It wasn't the most exciting storm of the evening - that came in Calgary when I returned home in the small hours.

2am and the still night was violently broken by 100km/h winds, intense lightning and heavy precipitation. The temperature dropped 10 degrees within 10 minutes and everything went crazy. I got some great footage of lightning on my cell phone but I'm having difficulty rotating the movie, which was taken in landscape, so that it is viewed right side up. Alas, I'm so tired from getting to bed at 3:30am I figure I'll tackle that one when my head is thinking more clearly...

Took the dog for a walk this afternoon and saw trees down and various debris everywhere. Talking with others it seems the entire city was hit by this with some people hiding in their basement because of the strong winds. There were a few moments when I wondered if I should be in the basement taking shelter rather than peering through the french windows filming the sky doing some damage. But I didn't want to miss anything. In some ways I'm glad this occurred at night because there would have been fewer people out and about and so less chance of injury or death (which unfortunately occurred the day before :( but also because the lightning was more vivid. Once the wind died down and the lightning was less intense I went upstairs for a better view. Thinking that the worst was over I thought I'd try and capture some cloud lightning as the storm headed away to the east. It's always the way: the storm was not done with my part of the city yet and 2 strikes occurred especially close, one of which made the alarm clock radio speakers click on the bedside table to my left. You never know where the 'streamers' are (those cute little mini lightning streamer thingies that come up from the ground in an attempt to connect with the 'stepped leader' from the cloud in order for the separation of charge to take place, thus creating the big lightning bolt... am I being too technical?) - it could be that one was coming from the roof of the house, in which case I was lucky it didn't connect. Scary thought.

Mum told me once that when lightning struck nearby it actually turned on her bedside clock radio. I wonder what the science is behind that?

Nature. So powerful, so mysterious.