Wheat Belt Lightning and Storm Photos

Sunday 22nd April 2001 was our last storm chase of the 2000\2001 summer, and the last chance for lightning pictures before winter set in. Towering cumulus visible early in the day to the east of Perth were a precursor to storms in the Wheat Belt later that afternoon. I met up with Mike Fewings and Mark Dwyer at 3pm and two hours later we were under the rain free base of a nice storm east of Northam. I took the pictures below standing in a paddock south west of Goomalling while the late afternoon sun illuminated the storms to our east.

Whilst taking the above photos and observing the storm's impressive structure a positive lightning bolt hit the ground within a few hundred metres of us! Although I did not get a picture of it Mike Fewings managed to catch part of the strike on video, but we suspect the lightning bolt also connected with the ground much closer to us outside the camera's view. Follow the link below to view video footage of the strike. The file is a little large (700KB) but well worth the wait! Make sure you turn your volume up and listen to the thunder clap! Thanks to Mark Dwyer for the video clip.

Positive Strike Video Clip

Below are some of the lightning pictures I took later in the evening as the storms moved past us travelling in a SSE direction. What was remarkable about these storms was the amount of positive strikes they produced. We did not get as close to these storms as we probably could have, but instead opted for the slightly distant shots of lightning illuminating the entire storm structure. This also allowed us to capture the numerous positive lightning strikes which would not have been possible had we gotten closer.