Great question. It is 105 and sticky, I'm watching the radar so I'll give it the full story here...
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In 1992 I experienced some beautiful feathery lightning near Indio while driving through the California Deserts at 4am. It was just starting to get light outside, revealing air strikes over mountains. I enjoyed the lightshow.
What I didn't realize was that the "Monsoon" in the Southwestern United States can really pack a punch, unleashing torrential rain, flash floods, severe wind gusts (when I say severe, I mean, even the potential for 100mph +, like one recorded at Deer Valley Airport at 115mph a few years ago), microbursts and frequent to even constant lightning.
I moved to Arizona in 1994, blissfully expecting fantastic winters and the summers to be what the almanacs say: Hot. And they are. But a month or so after arriving, I looked one summer night across the desert to the south at what appeared to be a solid purple, blackish wall being sliced in half by CGs.
The storm door was open for the Mexican Monsoon (so named because this pattern comes from Mexico). Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued as well as funnel sightings, here comes some intense wind, then a wall of dust followed by torrential rains. I didn't know at that point that I was about to experience one of the most severe storms of my life. This type of severe weather was also new to me as well because I grew up in Northern California, where fog and earthquakes make weather news.
When the wall arrived, the sky blackened and the storm started throwing down lightning like a mad scientist. I didn't know it was even possible for a storm to produce that much electricity, it was like an animation or Tesla coil, hard to describe. The lightning was close as well, hitting objects across the street and right outside. The power goes. Then a CG struck a tree that was touching my roof. It was a deafening crash, like something blowing up. I hit the floor.
Even with all that was going on, the thing I remember most is closing my eyes that night and seeing the afterimages of all the lightning strikes, a blinding effect that didn't go away for about two hours. When the storm finally moved off I went outside to take a look at the damage. Broken pieces of all kinds of stuff were everywhere. The landscaping was rearranged in Cuisinart fashion, there was a patio table set at the bottom of a pool, hundreds of trees were down all over town and power poles snapped in half, tossed upsidedown into the canals. Now in the shape of a giant Y, my lone tree was alive but split in half with a burn mark down the middle. The Mexican Monsoon delivered it's fury to my front door that night, scared the living tar out of me, but I didn't know that it also gave me a gift.
After that experience (and actually, no storm I have seen has matched it to date for electricity, even the ones I see in the Plains), I was shaken and thought to myself "Where the hell did I move to?" At the time I did not understand the Mexican Monsoon.
During the following months, I became fearful when lightning was near. In the desert, lightning is the ruler of the sky, CGs striking at will and touching closeby. No wonder the legends and lore, and that the Giant Saguaro cactus (icon of the desert) is also known as the Sentinel of the Desert. It's a 40ft water-filled lightning rod, taking the strikes on behalf of everything else.
I knew that I needed to do something, anything to decrease my nervousness around storms if I was going to live in Arizona and be at ease with the Monsoon. Life is weird. The whole experience was so ironic for me, because I was the weathergeek of the family, fascinated by lightning, thunder, tornadoes since I was old enough to read my dad's collection of science books. Lightning was always my subject of choice. I would dream about it, read about it, look forward to it and follow it once in awhile in the Sierra foothills. Now, I was the fisherman afraid of the sea.
1995 came so I hit the books, reading everything I could get my hands on about lightning and the Mexican Monsoon, with the strategy of educating my way out of fear. I didn't just want to see the lightning, I wanted to know it, how it works, the various forms of it and learn the lightning hotspots in the Southwest.
I collected a library of weather material, grabbed for "required reading" such as Martin Uman's book "Lightning" (cover is well worn). Warren Faidley's books were in my collection too, particularly because he is an Arizonan. I talked online to lightning afficionados here and in Australia.
Magazine was my career field, and with that, photography. I had hundreds of pictures of all kinds of subjects, just not lightning, not yet. But I couldn't think of a better way to understand my quarry then to photograph it in still form photojournalism, saving the image so I can look at the details later. By now, fear had become fascination.
I started visiting places like the Chiricahua, Mazatzals and Superstitions, to learn the roads and vantage points. (Forest service sign on the wall at Chiricahua Natl Monument: "Lightning index: none, moderate, frequent, constant"). Love that.
I set out to get dirty (and did I get dirty) running the deserts and learning to take pictures of lightning. Shortly thereafter I wanted to extend my season and catch some structure too so included trips to the Plains in the springtime (where lightning is very different, I discovered). Seasons later, I have a lightning collection, storm stories and yet, the passion for stormchasing never wanes (it gets worse LOL) and each year is a new chance.
There are thousands of blink-of-an-eye lightning bolts in Arizona each year and plenty to go for in the Plains. I plan to freeze a few of them in time. Someone asked me once why I go to such trouble to put lightning on film. The answer is simple, "So I can see it."
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