Its fixed! Last month I reported my weather station had been taken out by a lightning strike. It killed the PC that runs it plus the webcam attached, the modem, router and phones. Well I sourced an old PC which people tend to throw away these days but are still excellent workhorse number crunchers, set up the software and the data flow is back! The “skycam” is still offline as I am looking for a much higher quality unit to replace the fried original. But in time this too will be back. Naturally the phones are fixed and a new modem router sits resplendently on the desk. It highlights the power and unpredictability of lightning though. The BOM have a safety guide on their website. It says (in part)
“Before storm hits unplug appliances including radio, television and computers and do not touch electrical items or telephones during the storm.”
Clearly good advice and in my case the after effects are obvious. Of course if I was not out taking photos…… Well we wont go there haha! All is very easy in retrospect.
I have watched and documented the raw power of thunderstorms for over a decade now. Its something that never ever ceases to awe me. The connection with the earth, atmosphere and “me” as the observer feels complete, total, as if you are melded into the events about you, inseparable. Its addictive. With all this awe comes a very deep respect of the energy that is being released randomly about you. Its never something to take for granted. Despite the element of random unpredictable risk whenever there are storms about I will be twitchy with a need to be near them.
While we are talking of lightning I captured something that over a decade and hundreds of “bolt” images later I have yet to do! A first and an unusual one. Early in the morning of the 24th November I was woken by thunder around 3am. I did say it was early! Well I cant not get up and have a look now can I? A nice line of very active mid level storms was on a “train line” just south of me. It never got truly close enough to be spectacular but was great eye candy and worth getting out of bed for. It was icy on the hill with cold strong outflow winds lowering the windchill temp close to 7 degrees. I had managed a few good images, nice crisp clear bolts with rainshafts to one side and beautiful under-cloud structure. As they moved across my field of view so I moved the camera with them. One of these storms was almost out of frame as a last bolt arced back and just caught the edge of my camera view. I nearly deleted the image but a new storm was following and I rushed to recompose in the other direction.
So the image remained.
Back on the PC and looking through my nights efforts I noticed something odd silhouetted in the bolts in the image that I nearly deleted. Zooming in revealed “flash shadows”, silhouettes, of what looked like bats buzzing around while the storm was doing its “electric firings”. Its an amazing fluke. The lightning is in effect a massive flashgun and here it had done its job capturing the nocturnal flights of tiny bats. You very rarely see birds and the like in the air during storms which makes this even more amazing I think.
I have so many stories from my nights looking up with the camera at natures display. From a possible tornado or strong funnel cloud in the flashes to an exploding Russian satellite in the sky above its been quite a ride. Its not over yet either. I will ALWAYS be twitchy with that need to feel hear smell and immerse myself in an electric atmosphere. There are worse addictions 😉