Cassiopeia Observatory logo

Weather Updates, More Lightning Photos

Posted: 31 August 2021

Wednesday, 25 August 2021, began clear but clouds appeared mid-day as the Monsoon storm pattern began to re-establish itself. Thursday, 26 August, dawned clear, but the sky became mostly cloudy mid-afternoon with nearby thunderstorms. Friday, 27 August, also dawned clear, but Monsoon storms arrived in the area mid-afternoon. This one was west of Oracle.

photo

After sunset Friday night a thunderstorm to the south had some brief lightning that was captured by one of my webcams.

photo photo photo

Saturday, 28 August, was partly cloudy until late afternoon. A severe thunderstorm with lots of lightning and loud thunder passed just to the south of the observatory. There was flooding and wind damage in Tucson. Only had 0.01" rain from the storm here.

As the storm wound down after sunset, my webcams captured some lightning.

photo photo

Sunday, 29 August, was cloudy with a few storms in the area. Sunday night there were some thunderstorms about 15 miles to the north of Oracle. One of my webcams captured lightning.

photo

When I saw that photo I decided to take my D850 DSLR with the MIOPS Lightning Trigger outside for some lightning photography. These photos (various exposure settings, FL 24mm, slight crop) are merges of 8, 5, and 7 photos, respectively.

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

This is a single photo (f/5.6, 5 seconds, ISO 1000, FL 24mm; slight crop).

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

Monday, 30 August, was mostly cloudy with an occasional boom of thunder in the afternoon. At sunset there was a thunderstorm 10 miles west of Oracle. I took some photos of the lightning from this storm using the D850 DSLR and MIOPS Lightning Trigger (f/5.6, FL 24mm, 1/10sec, ISO 400, and 1 second, ISO 250, respectively, slight crop). The observatory dome is at the left.

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

This is a merge of 9 photos (f/5.6, 1 second, ISO 250, FL 24mm, slight crop).

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

About 90 minutes later another thunderstorm came through with lightning, thunder, and rain (0.2").

Tuesday, 31 August, began cloudy as Monsoon Season 2021 got ready to provide more storms fed by tropical moisture from remnants of Pacific Hurricane Nora. This iPhone panoramic photo (south-west-northwest) shows an approaching storm mid-afternoon (but the rain stayed to the west).

photo
Click or tap on image for larger version

Light rain began after sunset. And so ended August 2021.


Comments are welcome using Email. Twitter users can use the button below to tweet this report to their followers. Thanks.


Previous report

Cassiopeia Observatory Home Page

Back to Top


Copyright ©2021 Michael L. Weasner / mweasner@me.com
URL = http://www.weasner.com/co/Reports/2021/08/31/index.html