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Thanks Lori! It was a great summer for lightning for sure. Some of those shots I took right along side you! Hoping for a great monsoon this year but I'm not very confident in that happening. I think we're in for a dry period for awhile. I might be shooting down your way a lot more this summer where even in dry summers there's still a fair amount of storms down south.

It is open to the public. However the falls only happens when they are releasing water from the dam which isn't very often. Sometimes it might go years without a release. It may be too late to see it this time as this release was only scheduled to run until the end of January. The only reason I knew they were releasing water was a short video on the channel 12 TH-cam when they showed the falls and said it would be flowing until the end of January.

It was a really good year for lightning in 2024. Sucked for rain but the dry storms did produce a lot of lightning that wasn't rain wrapped. Anyway, glad you enjoyed the show!

@@kevinjoyce285 it was an incredible storm I'll never forget. It was the first storm of the day, just after noon, and it was right outside my home. It all happened so fast too! Those towers shot for the heavens and then let loose in grand fashion. The time lapse came out great, another bonus, as I was Johnny on the Spot with it being right in my own neighborhood. Thanks for commenting!

@@RyanSeek You didn't notice the "stuck out" joke, lol! Yeah, watching those towers grow is just beauty

@@kevinjoyce285 DOH! You are so right. That little funny you made went right over my head! Sometimes I'm an airhead. LoL (-:

If you want to see some really nice rotation search on my channel for a video titled rotating thunderstorm that was published late last summer. That was filmed at the exact same location, directly over Table Top Mountains. That video of the rotating storm and this one here were my two most dramatic time lapse videos from monsoon 2023. Glad you enjoyed!

Thank you, Wendy. Glad you enjoyed it! 😊

Thank you, Lori! It was a pretty amazing monsoon. Kind of like a fast paced marathon that took some serious will and dedication to maintain. And I loved every minute of it! Okay, not every minute, but the vast majority of them!

Oh, and I might add that YOU had an even better year than me. You absolutely slayed this year boggling my mind with one incredible capture after another. If there was such a thing I would nominate you for monsoon photographer of the year!

The thunder I heard while filming the storm might disagree with you on that. During monsoon storms don't need to get particularly high to create thunder and lightning. I've seen and heard it out of storms barely reaching 25k feet at the cloud top.

Mother Nature provides some incredible sights, many of them delivered courtesy of weather. Which is why I am a weather nut!

I thank you sir, for your very kind words. Indeed I have uploaded quite a few videos so far this monsoon so you have some catching up to do for sure since we last spoke last summer. Happy to hear from you again!

Thanks Lori! I've had pretty good luck at that location all summer. I've always had good luck there in fact. I've shot that lone saguaro on Park Link a thousand times over the years!

Thanks Lori! I'm pretty sure I could up my game though if I just followed you around! ;)

Similar terrain and not very far away. This was shot from hidden valley between the town of Maricopa and interstate 8. Shooting north the storm is directly over Maricopa when the time lapse begins. The storm is aimed at the little town of Stanfield which is just out of view stage right.

Thanks Niko! Best storms of the season right there. Sadly, they were also the last storms of the season as monsoon departed early this year. But it went out with a bang!

Just barely enough moisture in the mid-level to make these thunderstorms instead of garden variety rain storms. And just enough instability in pockets over the lower desert. Storms were more robust over the mountains where they had influence of orographic lift. That's why it was so shocking to get t-storms in May over the valley floor. Too many factors working against it in what is typically one of our driest months of the year. But on rare occasions like this mother nature stirs the pot and gets a good enough recipe for something like we see here. Thanks for the comment, appreciate it!

Thank you so much, Lori! After the rather mediocre monsoon I had this year it was nice to be blessed with a storm like that to close out the season! I have to congratulate you on your monsoon this year with all those awesome lightning shots and of course the incredible "night of the sprites". You got to cross a couple things off your bucket list this summer and I couldn't be happier for you. So, what are we supposed to do now? I feel lost! 😕

Yeah, that storm was a constant strobe light going off. Not many bolts coming out of the clouds but in a time lapse like this that's okay because the flashing and flickering puts on a pretty good light show of its own! Thanks Paul!

Thank you Michael! Glad you enjoyed.

Thank you, David

So true Paul! Our environment and atmospheric conditions during the summer are such that our storms look much different than what you see almost anywhere else. We get a lot of virga where the rain falls from the cloud but the air below is so hot and dry that the water droplets evaporate before hitting the ground. So it'll be raining directly over you but you feel nothing other than an occasional rogue drop that might land on your arm briefly before disappearing. The Arizona desert region is of course famous for the colorful sunsets and that is a year around phenomena, not necessarily related to thunderstorms (though the storms do enhance the sunsets significantly if they maintain their structure). Glad you are enjoying my videos and find them as fascinating as I do. See you on the next video which is coming soon!

Thanks for your additional info Ryan, and, of course, looking forward to your next video's!

Thank you Lori! Some people think photography is an easy job, but none of them have tried to capture anything beyond the view of their car window on the main highway. Fortunately I have my little 4wd pickup truck that allows me to go almost anywhere I want if I feel like running my innards through a paint shaker!

Hello David!

One larger single cell storm (the one NWS tagged as severe) and then several smaller cells training after the big one. It was more a line of storms like along a dry line as opposed to an organized cluster of cells which are fairly common during monsoon. Training of storms rarely happens during monsoon. Generally once and area has had activity the atmosphere is used up (turned over to use weather geek lingo) for the rest of that day at least.

Yeah, you can see in the video that the wind was moving my camera during filming. And that's with a large rock in a hammock hanging off my tripod to keep it steady! It's amazing how the wind blows the water out sideways at the surface... that is the source of straight line winds and they can be damaging to say the least!

Thanks, Paul! More videos in the works including some incredibly animated storm cells that came out great in time lapse.

Thanks Lori! It's amazing how much lightning we witness when you stop and tally it up by putting it all in one video like this. And this is just the first two weeks!

I thank you, Sir! When reviewing the footage I had complied the latter half of July it was clear that I needed to create a separate video just featuring the colors and clouds of sunrise and sets as I had quite a bit of quality material to work with. The storms have been very late in developing so far this monsoon, with minimal daytime activity. Instead they've initiated late afternoon and early evening when they are just hitting full stride around sunset, providing more than average filming opportunities with cloud structure still intact. Under normal conditions when storms start generating in early afternoon, the sky just becomes cloud soup by the time sunset rolls around and it's not very photogenic. So the abnormal behavior of the late developing storms has provided a unique opportunity to film more interesting activity at sunset when the colors are on display. The downside is I have less mid-day footage to work with this monsoon, but you learn to roll with the punches when you are chasing the weather! Appreciate you taking the time to comment. Another video will be unleashed tomorrow featuring nothing but night storms and lightning!

Looking forward to that one Ryan! Thanks for your explanation about the behaviour of these storms.

@@paulvanhoevelaak619 My pleasure! I love talking about storms! :D

Happy day after your birthday, David!

Thanks Niko! Glad you enjoyed it!

Indeed. Here in southern Arizona specifically, most of our monsoon moisture this time of year comes from the Gulf of Mexico as opposed to Eastern Pacific. That will change as the monsoon wears on however. Late August to mid-September our moisture more frequently tends to come up from your neck of the woods.

Rain bombs, I like that! Never heard of them being referred to in that way. But it is fitting, they really are like rain bombs going off when all the water dumps out of the cloud at once and is over in a matter of minutes. RAIN BOMB!

@@RyanSeek I like that too, once it just hitted me and the rain with wind was so strong

@@Sl4sher_io Well thanks for mentioning it here. It's a pretty cool way to refer to one of these big thunderstorms.

It was a blessing getting a little storm action in May. They looked and acted like monsoon storms too. Little did we know that almost 2 months later we're still sitting here waiting for the next one. Time clock is ticking away, unfortunately.