Pic of the Week 5/27/22 "Imminent Storm #2"
Pic of the Week 5/27/22
“Imminent Storm #2”
Location: Wichita Mountains, Cooperton, OK
Date taken: 4/23/22
You may be wondering, from the title of this image, where exactly is Imminent Storm #1. Well, its somewhere deeply buried in an old hard drive under my desk lost to a slew of unorganized file folders and fragmented data. The image was one of my first favorite storm photos. It was right before I started to try and shoot lightning. The photo displays a developing storm in the setting sunlight on the eastern horizon. Half of the storm is lit up in bright yellow and the other half is a gloomy gray. Below the storm, four sequential houses are silhouetted against the dark sky. This helped bring scale and drama to the image. Like I said, I would share it with you, but it is somewhere in my archives. Regardless, I captured an updated “Imminent Storm” photo from our trip to the western edge of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge back in April.
Not long after I captured the photo from my previous blog entry, I captured this image. Storm clouds were beginning to build bigger and bigger and soon our sun was blotted out by a thick gray band of advancing cumulus towers. Storms began erupting just beyond the mountains and the booming of thunder boomed down the valley. We started to make our way back to the paved road as I didn’t want to be on these red dirt paths during a downpour. Though we didn’t get too far as we saw something that really caught our attention.
Thunderstorms were moving in over the mountains now and a few drops of rain landed on our windshield. We were parked on the side of the road staring at the northwestern corner of Baker Peak. Small undulating hills line this side of the peak and are abruptly interrupted with crags and boulders closer to the summit. New updraft towers were accelerating just beyond the refuge and a pocket of sunlight filtered in through the rain. A closer nearby storm began to let loose and downpour on the valley. This framed up nicely with my composition making the left edge of the shot. Turkey vultures took flight from the cliffs seeking sanctuary from the storm. The edge of the storm stretched out just above the length of Baker Peak creating a window effect to the image. As I was capturing these images, I felt the same excitement that evening I captured “Imminent Storm #1”. It just goes to show, it doesn’t matter how many times I photograph a storm its always exciting and always an adventure!
