Dangerous Discharges

Two separate discharges of lightning are combined into a single image following a bow echo thunderstorm which passed through the area on the evening of Saturday, April 14, 2012. This image looks north toward Bowman Woods Park and Boyson Road NE (streak of lights from car traffic below the tree line) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I photographed the storm, with its powerful and dangerous strokes of lightning, from beneath the overhang of our back porch (upper right). Surprisingly, no hail fell from it and wind speeds never exceeded 30 mph. Heavy rain did fall though--around and inch and a half in about 15-20 minutes. Exposures were shot between 9:00-9:30 PM. One exposure was a 22 second shot at f/13 and the other a seven second shot at f/14; both at 250 ISO and 18mm focal length. This storm system produced scores of tornadoes in Kansas, Oklahoma and even SW Iowa on the same evening.