I've been coming out here since the mid 90s
documenting the scenery, all the amazing animals. quirky little towns but mostly
i'm here for the lightning.
Ground strikes here are so much more vibrant and visible
than with the beasts I usually encounter in Burrito alley.
Here the bases can be super high
and there's usually a lot less rain underneath.
So you get a lot more bang
for the bang.
Sometimes your lens is following the tiniest little storm. It almost looks like just a cloud
but photographers here know what these little suckers are capable of.
So you just shoot and shoot and shoot until eventually...
Pow!
Four, five clear CGs connecting to the ground in one event.
So many fingers and branching.
That, with the mountains and the desert
it's just the dreamiest place in the world sometimes.
In the summertime there's a large-scale wind shift that transports tropical air here
and so in the desert we get the North American monsoon.
One valley looks like it hasn't seen rain in a decade.
The next one looks more like Costa Rica than Arizona.
You get a lot of pulse storms. They only last 30-40 minutes.
It begins with an explosive updraft that matures into a storm and fires lightning all over the place.
Then it collapses on itself in a burst of water and wind.
The dead storm's surging outflow boundary then may help initiate another cell updraft
and the cycle is born again
Suddenly on radar you see a storm just going nuts with lightning 30 miles away
And right when you get there it dies.
And of course another one pops up over the location you just left.
Moooo.
Good summer afternoons usually begin with storms developing over the mountains.
I like the daytime stuff.
It's more of a challenge to capture these bolts
and there's a lot less white noise of these kinds of photos swarming the internet.
But you've always got one eye on the forecast,
waiting for all to come together
at sunset.
And when it does come together
it's usually in a different spot than what you calculated.
It almost doesn't matter because you can shoot a storm 30 miles away and still get great results.
At night
all the snakes and scorpions come out.
You're alone on some gravel road in the middle of nowhere.
You hear animals walking by and snorting at you in the blackness.
What the hell have I been looking at?
Oh it's a deer!
The coyotes, the javelina, deer whatnot,
are just letting you know you're trespassing.
There's animals everywhere!
The sky is so clear.
it's hard to find the constellations because they're buried in a trillion other stars.
Nice green trail on that one.
Your mind is wandering all over the place
and just maybe, maybe you'll catch a big jellyfish.
Boom. Ghost! Holy moly!
I'm in Arizona today. last seven out of seven days have all been non-stop lightning
starting at four o'clock going until midnight and then sometimes even shooting TLEs after that
It's been an incredible year, the best monsoon i've had
but anyway I got some good footage i thought i'd show you guys.
I got it just now in my hotel. New drone footage
first time ever aired anywhere drone footage debut. Hope you enjoy.
MUSIC: "La Male'diction de la Danse Du Poulet" by Pecos Hank