Lightning

Saturday afternoon I headed out to the Great Salt Lake to do some photography. I ended up camping in the quarry at Lakeside, about 200 feet above the elevation of the lake.

Watched storm after storm come across the lake, was utterly AMAZED by the amount of lightning that was going on. I quit counting after 100-or so. I didn't get any sleep that night. Usually I just toss out a pad and sleep under the stars, a tent is only a last resort.

I couldn't get any sleep because of all the lighting that was going on, some of it was VERY close. I wasn't the highest object and never felt that static-y feeling on the back of my neck, so I didn't feel like I was in danger. But, the lighting was impressive and just as soon as I would fall asleep I would be woken back up by another round.

About 2am it started to rain, pretty heavy really, so I hunkered down in the truck until it quit. Got back out and crawled back in the bag.

About 4am (I'm guessing...), I woke up staring at a bazillion bright stars and a crystal clear sky. Most notably it was deathly quiet. Very weird considering how hard it was to sleep.

While I was waiting for myself to get tired, I did manage to make some images. The first is just of a random lightning strike, the second is a cloud above Ogden being lit up from the inside by lightning. The streak in the foreground is the train going across the causeway heading east.

The next morning I headed off to the west, drove along the western shore of the lake and saw some thick dark clouds to the north that were obscuring some billowy white ones. I thought it was a fire and so I headed up to see if I could photograph it for the project.

The closer I got, the more I could see that it was way north of the lake, but I wanted to check it out anyway. It's a huge fire complex of about 10 smaller fires burning on the Utah/Idaho state line just northwest of Snowville.

Got some nice images of the smoke, got a drink at the Flyin' J, and headed back toward the lake to photograph birds.