CraigBILL

I have always loved storm chasing. It has never gotten old. Just the power these Great Plains storms have is amazing. The average thunderstorm releases the energy equivalent of a 20 kiloton nuclear weapon, or a small nuclear power plant. Electrical potential between cloud and ground must build up to levels of tens to hundreds of millions of volts before a lightning strike forms.

At any given moment, there are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms occurring over the Earth. It is estimated that 100 lightning flashes occur each second somewhere on the Earth, adding up to nearly 8 million lightning flashes per day.

This storm was not all that big, but it made up for it in intense electrical energy and light that was just incredible. This image comprises of five different lightning bursts layered over each other. After about an hour, the storm lost its gusto and disintegrated while others in the distance gained strength. ‘’Tempest’ is an image that records an atmospheric and celestial event over a time span (counting the moonrise). Most of the image, the storm and lightning, took only fifteen to twenty minutes to catch. ‘Tempest’ fuses these various dynamic elements into one photograph - like a still time-lapse.