On this late southern Arizona evening, an electrically prolific, high-based multicell thunderstorm cluster flung over 100 cloud-to-ground lightning flashes within view. I managed to catch about 80 of them on camera. Here are three of the closest, including one with a branched bottom (at right). Their differences in brightness mainly relate to how much of the storm’s rain core was falling between discharge and camera. The CGs were striking just a couple miles away and not terribly far behind a state highway, with a southbound vehicle crossing the view in this roughly 20-second exposure. The first hints of a nighttime haboob appear at right. Its dusty plume would overtake me within a minute, blasting zero-visibility grit, causing me to don a pandemic mask for the purpose of airborne dirt filtering, and temporarily shutting down my lightning shooting until it passed.
