Walking The Dogs (1)

I got a couple of fun Skywatch Friday shots while walking the dogs in my neighborhood recently - here's one in the late afternoon a few days ago looking towards the mountains.

Textbook Severe Thunderstorm

I was glad this severe thunderstorm passed to our south a few days ago, not over us, as it was dropping tennis-ball sized hail as I took this photo.

Skywatch Friday

More Stormy Skies

My mother-in-law passed away last week so I took a few days away from blogging while we buried her. Now I'm back with a stormy Skywatch Friday photo from last summer. It will be thunderstorm season again in a couple of months!

Lots of Interesting Clouds

For this week's Skywatch Friday post, here are several interesting skies seen from my house over the last few weeks. First, a pretty watercolor. All photos are straight out of the camera.

These next clouds can indicate a severe thunderstorm.

My favorite is from a nearby storm after the sun went down, making for a surreal sky - if you look carefully you can see a little lightning in the middle-right of the cloud, illuminating it from within. I've got more shots from this storm saved for another post.

I love Colorado summer skies - there's always something to see.

Skywatch Friday - Sun, Storm, and Rainbow

Believe it or not, despite all my pictures of snow and storms, the weather here is usually very nice. We get 250 to 300 sunny days a year, and my first set of four photos shows one of those beautiful days from this past Sunday when I took Socks for a walk in Fox Run Park.

In the spring and summer, it's common for storms to form in the afternoon on these sunny days. You can see some distant clouds in this second shot.

The storms often form over Pikes Peak, as seen in these next two photos, still taken during that same walk. That's why I usually hike in the morning, as the storms won't have formed yet.

I have to keep up my reputation for posting bad weather pictures, so here's one from a couple of days ago, a classic anvil thundercloud seen in the distance while another storm was forming overhead.

And finally, a rainbow after the storm had passed. Rainbows are not uncommon, as the evening sun almost always shines after the storms move away from the mountains. Occasionally there's a fantastic full double-rainbow; this one isn't one of our better rainbows but it's the first of the summer.

Visit the Skywatch Friday page for more sunny and stormy skies.

Skywatch Friday - Stormy Skies

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Here's another picture from a summer storm, in fact the same storm which spawned the lightning that hit the tree across the road.

For more photos of interesting skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday.

Skywatch Friday - Thundercloud at Sunset

Back in the summer, I caught this thunderhead just before sunset. It was much bigger than it appears here, this is captured at 12mm (18mm in film equivalent). We get a lot of afternoon thunderstorms here in the May through September timeframe. If you like lightning photos I've got a couple here and here, and a distant thunderstorm with lightning here, all from before when I joined Skywatch Friday.

For more photographs of this kind, visit Skywatch Friday.

Close Lightning Strike

I just photographed an amazing lightning strike near my house. It hit a tree across the highway from me and I caught it on the camera. I was close enough to literally see the pine needles explode off the tree.

Here's a crop of the tree from the above photograph.

It was quite loud.

Road To Black Canyon

After the Dunes we drove to the Black of the Gunnison. On the way we stopped by this pretty little mountain stream.

Along the road we saw this thunderstorm formation ahead of us - the classic anvil shape is very obvious here.