january heat

Its been a hell of a weekend! ... weatherwise, at least. We made record temps. yesterday, nearly 63* and today almost 69! A moth harassed the porch light for a few moments tonight- backdroped by a spectacular showing of lightning. Tornados threaten the central parts of Missouri as well as the rest of the midwest and snow is in the forcast within the next few hours. Can you say 'global warming'!?

I took a sec. to try to shoot the lightning, but had no success. A few minutes ago, near 10:30 I steped outside. It was very warm and the top of every pine tree whiped around in the wind. Air near the ground felt fairly still and the yard was quiet for a few seconds. I looked up a great elm tree and noticed a few stars peaking through the clouds. The clouds seemed to move at an extraordinary pace when I had the still tree in the foreground. I snatched up my camera and set it atop the tripod.
A bright flash of lightning lit the sky every now and then, casting a strait beam of light that revealed the topography of the floating cieling. It was beautiful, and because the clouds moved so quickly, it seemed like a great photo opp. I took (4) 8 sec exposures. The photos came out nicely, but the clouds were far too bright and they glew pink and yellow with the city lights. One exposure came out softer than the others and had a white glow. I suspect that I had caught a glimpse of lightning and the last exposure was a 3.5 sec one.

There are two stars poking through the darker patch in between clouds on the left side of the tree. Photo could be pretty cool woth some editing!