lightning

Stormy Skies over Charleston

Last weekend, the South experienced an almost unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes spawned by severe thunderstorms that swept through the area. This past weekend, more severe weather was predicted, and so we all hunkered down, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. Mercifully, there were no tornadoes, just rain and some lightning. I visited a couple of my favorite city viewpoints to watch the clouds roll in, and captured these just before it started to rain. I do love Charleston!

Summer Storm over Charleston

We seem to be in a familiar pattern where after the intense heat of the day, summer storms form and unleash their energy in the late afternoons. This is always an opportunity for creating dramatic images, and this lightning strike was shot over the downtown Charleston skyline, under a canopy of broiling clouds.

More Summer Storms

The evening storms have been providing great photo opportunities lately. I have a gadget that attaches to my camera that is supposed to trigger the shutter when lightning strikes, but for the life of me I can’t get it to work, so these shots are the result of patiently waiting for a bolt, and tripping the shutter as fast as I can on continuous shooting mode. When I’m done, I end up with hundreds of nothing images and one or two keepers. Here are last night’s keepers, this time looking out over the Stono River.