July 21st - 26th, 2007 Tucson, Arizona Monsoon Trip
Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 21:27 Written by Roger Hill
Severe thunderstorm approaching Tucson, Arizona July 21, 2007
What a fun week this turned out to be! Our tour company, Silver Lining Tours, is going to operate a new tour called Desert Thunder in 2008. So, my wife Caryn and I, along with our good friend Alister Chapman headed to Tucson to film the monsoon storms. We were NOT disappointed! During an active monsoon, as this was, storms formed daily off the higher terrain east of south of Tucson, then propagated and rebuilt on thunderstorm outflow winds, on the desert flatlands. These storms a extremely photogenic, producing intense lighting, haboobs (dirt storms, some QUITE dangerous as you will see below), and flash flooding. This turned out ot be one of my favorite NONtornadic ventures of the year.
Click on this link for a high speed time lapse of a monsoon storm developing near Tucson. This was time lapsed over nearly a two hour period: TUCSON TIME LAPSE (16 MB)
Click on an image for a larger image. Enjoy!!
Gorgeous severe storm lit by the setting sun near Tucson, AZ. |
Another shot as a rain foot and haboob (dirt storm) develop. |
A little try and black and white lightning photography. |
What can be said? Stunning lightning displays! |
More stunning lightning! |
Yes, saguarro cactus are HUGE!!! |
Hmmm, a bit of humor here LOL!! No outlet??????? |
Nice daylight lighting near Oracle. |
More daytime lighting in the hills west of Oracle. |
Quite an electrified storm! |
Monsterous torrential downpour develops prompting flash flood warnings. |
WOW!! My favorite lightning strike! This storm fired off many CGs west of Tucson. |
Awesome. Sun shining orange on the top of this small storm, with lightning west of there in another storm. |
Quite intense CG strike from the previous storm. to the left! |
A bit over exposed, but I put it here anyway. This was south of Tucson near Green Valley near a mountain we affectionately named "Old Faithful" and it was! |
Another shot from the same storm. Quite photogenic even in bright daylight. The thunder was quite pronounced. |
Developing haboob north of Tucson along I-10. |
Kind of a cool shot of the developing haboob, with mountain peak and storm in the background. |
Full fledged haboob!!! |
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Neat shot with the haboob and the disappearing telephone poles in the foreground. |
Haboob is getting VERY close We had 50 MPH winds for nearly 20 minutes! |
Back on I-10 heading south. Don't EVER slam on your brakes in a dirt storm! |
This is why! A multicar pile up with several cars exploding into flames! |
Amazingly, no fatalities!!! |
Ah, the view from above as we flew back to Denver. Nice monsoon storms developing on the hills north of Phoenix. |
A wider shot of the storms. |
Neat looking down as the CUs cast a shadow on the ground below. |
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