Lightning Show

Where I grew up, summer thunderstorms were a regular afternoon thing. I remember being used to getting out of the pool for thunderstorms and getting back in 15 minutes later. On vacation in Sea World one year, we were stuck in the smelly penguin exhibit for an hour because there was hail and an absolute downpour. Once it stopped, the weather resumed being sunny and hot, and we went about our business. That was life in the south, I guess.

 I never really gave those thunderstorms a thought at all though until Carson visited South Carolina for the first time. "WOW", he said in an awestruck voice as he sat on the porch every afternoon, "I have never seen anything like this. I've never heard thunder that was so LOUD". Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that often during the summer, lightning, thunder and rain showers would sometimes take over for the afternoon, providing a powerful show. Carson still talks about how amazing that was, so I'm thinking he will be in for a treat in the Florida summers.

A few weeks ago, Carson had a friend over to play a board game. They walked outside when his friend was leaving at about 10pm and Carson called me to come outside a few moments later. Outside in the sky was a crazy display of lightning. It was mostly silent, and absolutely HUGE and stuck in just one cloud. I've never seen anything like it. Carson begged me to grab the camera, so I did and we took over 200 pictures trying to capture the camera-shy flashes (turning the flash off and putting it on sport setting so it took continuous pictures - even if most are bad - was the trick). Of those 200, I deleted all but 9. 

Carson took these ones with the flash: 

And while he was trying his hand with the flash photography, I took this video on my phone. You can see the flashes from the camera on our neighbor's house.

And here's a GIF of several of the good flashes combined. 

I'm so glad we enjoyed this powerful show one random spring evening.