August 4, 2013 Deming, NM lightning

This week I am directing a “monsoon tour” for Tempest Tours.  We began the tour today in Phoenix, and my driver Bob Smith and I made our way towards southeastern Arizona for some late afternoon and evening activity.  One decent cell beckoned well south of Willcox towards sunset, but it appeared that even stronger storms with a better chance of persisting were developing in southwestern NM.  We continued east on I-10 into NM.  By the time we reached Deming, it was dark, and a strong storm was to our south, near Columbus (along the Mexico border).   We stopped about 16 miles south of Deming and pointed our camera lenses southward, and were rewarded with a fantastic CG (cloud-to-ground lightning) display, with really nice bolts every 10 to 20 seconds.  I thought that some of my CGs were out of focus, but they were actually behind a wall of dust that was surging out from the precip core.

We made our way back to the motel in Deming near midnight, and another decent cell spit out some long CGs just south and southwest of town.  I had my camera on a tripod in the median of Pine Street in Deming and caught several more nice bolts.

The images shot south of Deming were with the 70-200mm lens, averaging at around 150mm setting.  The images in Deming were with the fantastic 21mm Zeiss lens.