No, this is unlikely to be a regular thing – there’s no way I want to commit to that – but it’s a sample of the conditions today and I have a few minutes, so…
After about two months, seriously, with no rain except for what the hurricane drove inland, the trend broke last night – and naturally, I had to be out in it getting completely soaked; thankfully, this was not with camera equipment. This morning the rain returned, which is fine since we badly need the water, and this time it brought a nice little electrical storm. I have no lightning images this time around, mostly because it was daylight so the shutter cannot be locked open waiting for a strike to occur (well, it can, but the result will be a solid white picture,) but also because the storm was centered almost directly overhead, not only making it dangerous to be out someplace, it was pouring and this obscures everything except the very closest strikes. So the image seen here is from back in July, and was a casual effort during another close storm that did not bring any rain – again, it wasn’t prudent to do a proper session, so this was captured by bracing the camera against the front porch railing and simply holding the shutter open. Not too bad for that, really – could easily have been worse, especially with the opportunity for camera shake. I include it solely for visual accompaniment.
But this morning, as the thunder became strident, I stepped out onto the front porch (the same location as this image) with the little audio recorder in hand, and captured a sample of ambient noise right in the neighborhood, including the crows flying through. It’s a nice little ambient sound file that captures the lingering thunder echoes pretty well, I have to admit.
Ambient thunderstorm
I didn’t even fade in the ends, so you can play this on a continuous loop for background noise or whatever. Or you can if you know how to download the audio, which isn’t hard. If you want it and cannot figure out how to do it, let me know and I’ll give you a pointer to the file location where you can download it directly.
Now, I have to admit this is a slightly edited file, trimmed a little for length, but more importantly for timing. You see, almost as soon as I’d activated the recorder (which takes a few seconds to initialize,) there was a very close strike, and right at the beginning of the recording came the thunder, which was impressive. I include it here just for the experience, but do not have your volume up too high – this maxes out the levels. I’m pleased that I captured it, but it would have been nicer had it come a little further into the recording, you know?
A very close strike
Notice how the echoes linger and roll around – always the best part of a thunderstorm. Well, okay, second best after the impressive visual displays.
And if you want an image to couple with this one, go here – it was a comparable experience.