max_altitude said:
Nice shots mate! I love storm clouds/thunder/lightening, they're so menacing and malevolent. Was it a decent storm or did it sort of just pass through? We haven't had a decent one down here for a while, though the next couple of days are supposed to by hot so who knows what that might bring.
Fast, lasted about 30 minutes or so but an absolute doozy. Poured with rain to the point where I could barely see the building next door and the roads turned into torrents, lightning strikes everywhere as my lights flickered on and off for a while, the thunder sounded like it was in the next room.
It was churning like an angry ocean underneath, everything changed so quickly. Lots of up and down and sideways movement but I don't think it was rotating - awesome squall line as it came in. Wouldn't surprise me if there were a few waterspouts off the coast, it was moving north-east and those photos towards the mountains are basically looking due east - two blocks behind me is the beach.
By the time I went off to work about an hour later the skies were all but clear, a few storms on the horizon beyond the escarpment but so far nothing's come of them. It is nice and cool now though, can't sleep, too much coffee at work. We got a new espresso machine and the coffee it puts out tastes amazing.
Meanwhile, at 2am on the 17th (about 12 hours after the storm) the streetlights are still out. It's soooo dark outside, you should see the stars- we have easily 5 times the number of visible stars as the northern hemisphere as the Milky Way runs across our night sky. At about midnight tonight Orion was there (upside down wrt all the pictures you see in books) in the northern part of the sky and as clear as I have seen it. The storm not only knocked out a lot of the light pollution but it blew away most of the smog from the steelworks. It's a beautiful night tonight.
The stars sound amazing. On a nice clear night we get a pretty decent view though there's a bit too much light pollution - get a bit further out of town and it's awesome.
