North West Lightning and Storm Photos

The photos below show a rotating lightning storm I photographed near Kununurra on Monday 5th January 2004. At the time I was taking these photos I thought the storm structure illuminated by lightning showed signs of rotation but wasn't 100% sure as it may well have been a gust front. The photos do confirm my initial suspicions, with the rotating updraught clearly visible silhouetted against the downdraught illuminated by constant lightning. Also visible is the top of the updraught and a back sheared anvil, both revealed by almost constant lightning at the top of the storm. The storm produced several spectacular positive lightning strikes into clear air to the right of the updraught which I wasn't unfortunately able to capture.

The photos below, which are crops of images 2 and 3 above, show in more detail the rotating wall cloud silhouetted by constant lightning within the storm's heavy rain core. Even on radar the storm was more reminiscent of severe storms of southern latitudes, with a heavy precipitation core and an obvious anvil streaming off to the north west. Click HERE to view a radar image of the storm. You can click on the images below for larger views, although their quality leaves a lot to be desired as they are only crops of the scans above (something I shall rectify in the near future!).

As the above storm moved to the west it became obscured by a line of trees forcing me to look for another vantage point. I drove along Ivanhoe Rd and stopped a few kilometres north of Kununurra as the storm was now fully visible over the Ivanhoe irrigation plane. The storm was now weakening and had lost much of it's impressive structure, but it continued to be very lightning active allowing me to capture the photos below.

This was a very picturesque, yet extremely frustrating storm to chase. The storm went up in the late afternoon near Lake Argyle, then propagated northwards to be north east of Kununurra right on sunset. Although it was very lightning active my attempts at lightning photography were foiled by both it's location (lack of roads prevented me from getting closer) and it's timing (there was still too much light for long exposures). I took the photos below just to capture it's fantastic structure. Shortly after I took these photos the storm accelerated away over inaccessible country, thus ending my chase.