The Palm Before the Storm

In January I needed a photo of clouds for an online challenge. As the rules dictated that the photo had to be taken during that week, I kept my eyes open for something interesting in my immediate surroundings and discovered some interesting cloud activity around a palm tree growing in my next-door neighbours' garden. This was the resulting image.

In the weeks that followed I decided to see if I could get an interesting time lapse video of the cloud activity around that tree, so I set up my video camera on a tripod, in hope that the weather would cooperate.

After a few false starts during which my camera setting were way off what was required, I finally got the technical side sorted out. One sunny afternoon I set the camera up and left it to film unattended while I got on with other things. After I while I was starting to despair of getting anything worthwhile as there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Then, as it typical of Johannesburg weather, things changed very quickly, and the result was a video in which there were heavy rain and a few bolts of lightning. If my memory serves me correctly we had hail too, though it's not apparent from this footage.

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Linking to Skywatch Friday, Blue Monday and The Ultimate Rabbit Hole.