Andamooka lightning photos from December 1st 2001 storm
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More photos from the December 1 (and now getting close to December 2):
I doubt very few if any of these exposures went for more than 30 seconds, the lightning was still flashing at close to a strike per second and it was all across the sky, if I had another ten cameras I could have got ten times as many photos as this and they all would have been of similar quality.
At this stage I decided that it was time to go, I was right up on some of the dumps and was by far the tallest thing in the immediate vicinity and having a metal tripod made me a fair candidate to be hit. In hindsight I perhaps could have stayed a bit longer, or moved to lower ground and continued taking more photos. There's always next time when you're still here to say that. Like I said earlier this lightning was some of the thickest I have ever seen. However the flashes were some of the fastest I have ever seen, quite frequently you never saw a bolt, you would only see a brightness originate from the section of the sky, after a while though a pink image of the bolt itself would appear - a retinal image. This may explain why this storm is also one of the quietest I have ever heard, It was almost a 'stealth' storm and the thunder never got louder than a dull rumble. If you were inside without windows you would have had no idea such a good storm was outside. After I left the dumps I went home and set up the camera in the breezeway at my parents house to see if I could get anymore photos, the results are on the next page.
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