Blue Lightning

A very fierce and intense summer thunderstorm rolled right over our camp in Bahia Honda this evening. It started with clouds and thunder in the distance and turned into an absolutely torrential downpour with local lightning making loud cracks very quickly after the bursts of light made their appearance.

Fearful of a repeat of last Saturday night's tent flooding and sunshade collapse, I decided not to seek shelter near the bathroom building and instead ride out the storm under my sunshade. I'd checked the Marmot Den 4 tent to make sure it was staked down, zipped up and ready for a storm. But I wasn't confident that my sunshade would do so well. I'd setup the sunshade next to the tent and draped a heavy blue tarp over it in yet another attempt to escape the hot Florida sun. Underneath it my picnic table was covered with supplies and gear that I wanted to protect.

As the storm moved in closer and the rain grew harder the sunshade started to collapse. It's not built for bad weather and the heavy tarp on top was made heavier when it started to collect rain in low pockets and folds. I made a couple quick dashes out into the rain with a hammer to adjust the rope lines that were meant to keep it stable. Out for only 30 to 45 seconds to fix it but when I returned inside I was soaked with water.

I sat inside listening to the thunder thinking about how safe all this was. My portable fan sat on the picnic table connected to a 50 foot extension cord that was plugged into to my campsite's power port. Live power, rain soaked ground pooling with water and thunder directly over head. What an adventure!

As with most storms in the keys, after about 30 minutes, it was mostly gone. The rain diminished to a trickle and the thunder didn't sound like it was directly over head. I left the sunshade tent and surveyed the situation: not bad, everything standing, tent's ok, car is ok.

With new lightning coming from the west, I grabbed my flashlight and my camera and went out to explore. Other campsites were flooded with standing water and I saw damage to RV awnings that weren't put up and tents that weren't weighted down enough.

On the west side of the camp ground with a view of the modern Bahia Honda highway bridge I setup the tripod and took about 80 long exposure shots of the second storm stalling in the west. Here's three of the best shots from a memorable night with a grand finish.