An exciting night!

My kids have been at Summer Hummer all week (Think VBS on Crack – 895 kids, 400 helpers, at least 20 guys dedicated to PARKING). We were out at the final celebration picnic and as they finished the last song, the thunder began to roll. We hurriedly gathered our stuff and headed home.

I had to stop on the side of the freeway because it was hailing and raining so hard I couldn’t drive; the hail was small marble size!! No kidding. I have never seen it that big.

We got home and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to take lightening pictures – but it wasn’t going to happen in the daytime. But the clouds were spectacular!

It started to get dark and I finally started to figure it out (what the heck is aperture anyway???) and I missed the big ones that went off over our heads and totally freaked the kids out. It was quite close for a long time. It started around 8 and it is midnight now and still going…but I kept on practicing and got lots (think HUNDREDS) of pictures like this:

(that is overexposed lightening…)

and this:

But then I started getting pictures like this:

And my favorites…

I could stay up all night trying to catch the fraction of a second where the sky is on fire… but I do need to go to bed eventually. Supposed to have more tomorrow… hope it lasts into the night so I can practice some more. We don’t get lightening like this in the NW very often!