Wheat Belt Lightning and Storm Photos

Daytime lightning pictures are most difficult to capture as you relay purely on your reflexes (unless you own a lightning trigger of course!). The shot below was my first ever daytime lightning photo. Sunday January 7th 2001 was somewhat unusual in that I first noticed storms to the east of Perth at nine in the morning! After packing my gear I joined up with Mike Fewings and Nick Djordjevic, and along with a couple other guys we quickly drove to Northam. I took this photo from the lookout overlooking the town as the thunderstorms moved through. The lightning is actually striking in the middle of Northam, and is one of the closest I've ever taken.

A picturesque thunderstorm east of New Norcia in the heart of the Wheat Belt. Judging by it's relative isolation and longevity (it lasted for more than 4 hours) this storm was probably severe. Earlier in it's life it featured an overshooting top, strong back shear, and great low level features which I was too far away from to capture. I have no way of confirming it of course but I suspect that it is a hail shaft clearly visible below it's core.

This was one of those nights when persistence did pay off in the end. The day didn't look fantastic as far as storms are concerned but myself, Mike Fewings and Greg Spencer decided to chase anyway in hope that the mid level trough would produce more than just the forecast patchy rain. Early on the weather was disappointing, but we did get a few storms and ended up just north of Bindoon as the last storm dissipated right on sunset. We could easily have headed home right then but decided to hang around just in case something redeveloped. Sure enough a thunderstorm developed between Bindoon and Toodyay just after 10pm allowing me to take these lightning photos standing in the middle of a farm road.