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It was a long day Saturday of gardening, puttering and a most pleasant party. So when we got home and the sky started sparking around 11 p.m. or so, I was not particularly motivated to chase the lightning. The storms were moving offshore, and the best view would have been from Cape Canaveral or maybe Cocoa Beach. After several minutes of agonizing, I instead drove just down the road to Cocoa’s Riverfront Park and took some shots pointing east toward the storms. The lightning was really far away, but the lights on the water and the S.R. 520 causeway bridge made for an interesting setting. Here’s the best of the bolts, partially obscured by clouds. I cropped this shot to get the framing I wanted.

 
I used the Nikon D7000 to shoot Hurricane Irene’s big waves in Cocoa Beach on Friday as the storm missed Florida but, nonetheless, churned up the Atlantic.

It was challenging getting the focus right with all the glare. Guess I have to bring a blankie to cover my head next time. Still, the waves were pretty awesome!  This is a one-minute look.

Impressive, isn’t it?

Usually, in Florida, this is about the time we hold our breath and check to make sure our belongings are as secured as they can be and doublecheck the boards (or shutters, or whatever) on the windows. But it appears Hurricane Irene’s worst will be reserved not just for the Carolinas, but for the northeast. I’ve always wondered how the northeast would react to a storm like this. Unfortunately, we’re about to find out. I’d encourage residents up and down the East Coast of the United States not to take this storm lightly. Secure small objects, lay in a supply of water (one gallon per person, per day) and batteries for flashlights, and have enough nonperishable food to last three days. Even being without power for a few days (let alone weeks) can be miserable, and if you don’t have the right supplies, it’s much worse. You might also stock a cooler with ice. It won’t last forever, but it can tide you over. We also make sure we have gas for our generator and propane for our grill. The grill, which also has a burner, meant we ate pretty well in 2004 when we were without power after both Frances and Jeanne. Plus it’s a way to cook meat that’s in your freezer before it goes bad. Also make sure you have a car charger for your cell phone, make sure your car has gas, and get some cash ahead of time.

Here are my links to tropical weather data, including model tracks.

Here are FEMA’s hurricane preparedness tips.

Want to learn more about hurricanes? See the Sky Diary kids’ hurricane page.

For entertaining, thorough weather discussions of Irene and Florida weather in general, check out Steve Sponsler’s High Speed Dirt blog.

I love to see an isolated cell light up right at sunset, and over water, it’s even better. This was more of a cluster of cells, and they produced a few nice bolts before they croaked. I’m sure I missed a few as I drove over Merritt Island and got into position on the Banana River to take photos (and donate a quart of blood to the mosquitoes).

The lightning may have been sparse, but it was pretty. I’ve found sometimes the best crawlers happen in the dying phases of the storm, and sometimes you have to wait several minutes between flashes to nab them. But this storm hovering off Cape Canaveral really stopped when it stopped producing, allowing me to get several more mosquito bites as I painstakingly held the shutter open for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, hoping against hope. Oh, well. Comes with the territory.

I took a chance on a wave of lightning storms after dark Monday – they seem to be rare creatures these days – and dashed down the road to Viera with my camera to get out of the rain. It’s amazing how circumstances conspire to deprive you of shots. The bolts were few and far between this night, yet on a relatively quiet road, a car drove in front of me just as one hit. Another strike had its best leg just out of frame. Still another was so bright (and close) that it drastically overexposed the frame and burned itself on my retina for a while. And a perfect shot eluded me during one of the two seconds when the shutter wasn’t open each minute.

Still, as you can see above, I got one. But I also wanted to recount the ones that got away. Even if you think you know how to do this stuff, it’s never easy to get that perfectly framed shot when it comes to lightning. It’s unpredictable.

Earlier Monday, I drove south to check out some storms and saw a lightning bolt hit well ahead of the rain and clouds – one of those bolts from the blue. That’s why the lightning safety folks say, “When thunder roars, go indoors.”

At some point when you’re trying to outrun an outflow boundary – what was a pretty shelf cloud, during the brief glimpse I had of it – you run out of road. At least around here. My pursuit ended at the Atlantic Ocean in Cocoa Beach, but I got shots of the shelf as it pushed out over the sea this evening. The colors were so silver and blue, almost monochromatic, that I converted the image to black and white so the textures would come out.

I’ve often heard people say that in Florida, “like clockwork,” a storm pops up about 3 p.m. in the summer. That’s almost true, and it may be more true farther south in, say, Miami. Probably somewhere in the state a storm pops up, but we don’t always get them here on the east-central coast. Today, we sure did, as storms moved in from the west, with a lot of lightning and dramatic structure. I’d still rather have a nighttime lightning storm for photography’s sake, but this one was impressive as it moved into Cocoa, as seen from next to the S.R. 520 causeway.

I don’t necessarily have all day to wait around in central Florida for storms to fire, but I did go out before sunset to check out a line of storms in extreme western Brevard County. They made for a pretty backdrop to the anglers courting lightning strikes out at the Lone Cabbage Fish Camp. After dinner, I went out again, hoping for the storms – and the lightning – to persist. I saw a few crawlers while I got into position and barely anything after that. Once again, the storms didn’t survive much beyond sunset. I had a similar experience when I tried to chase the Arizona monsoon several years ago, though I’m sure I gave that too few days to be successful. Here’s hoping we get more lightning shows this summer – at night, when I can see them!

As I was on the way to the memorial service yesterday, a mass of rain and storms was rolling into the Space Coast. I stopped for just a moment to get this photo of a toothy shelf cloud moving over the barrier islands. At points it looked as if there were fingers draping over the landscape as I got closer to it and then was lashed by the rain. Florida is king of the shelf clouds.

We’ve had much-needed rain this week in the form of daylong gully-washers. The National Weather Service in Melbourne recorded 2.48 inches of rain June 29, a record. The next day, it noted 1.29 inches. June had 5.9 inches, compared with 16.91 for the year overall – more than a third of the year’s rainfall, much of it in two days!

I thought I’d check out the sea-breeze storms on June 23, since they were such a pretty, puffball, popcorn white against the blue sky. But they also lived fast and died young, going up quickly, dumping their rain and pretty much dissipating. Still, it made for a pleasant afternoon driving around what I call Florida’s prairie, the flat areas in the middle where few people live. I sure did see a lot of orange groves near Holopaw, though. And another thing I can note: It’s probably a good idea to take a “no trespassing” sign seriously when it’s posted on a fence next to a big pile of spent bullets, not to mention fire ants.