Tag:storms
The vertical framing of this shot has changes the overall exposure with the layer of cloud above the aircraft more dark and ominous looking. The sun is setting on the far side of the cloud wall with rays of sunlight streaking through the gaps in the clouds lighting them up like they’re on fire while sheets of rain fall on the communities just inland of the coast.
But looking back I got this fantastic view of the sunlight from the setting sun streaming through the gap in the clouds with sheets of rain from the storm falling just inland from the coast. I once again turned to my Canon S100 to capture the scene. From the features on the ground, the aircraft would have been over or just south of Eisenhower, Lehigh Acres, Florida. You can make out the Gulf coast and the southern end of Estero Bay between the two sheets of rain in the center of the photo.
The cruising speed of a Boeing 737 is a shade over 500 miles per hour (all things being equal) so we’d traveled about eight miles closer to the cloud wall. Add to that the cloud wall was moving west, towards us and that yields the change in the cloud shapes between the two photo-sets.
As we approached the west coast of Florida I saw a wall of cloud to the south-east, pretty much aligned with the coast, illuminated from the setting sun to the west. I shot several frames of the scene with my Canon S100.
The image below was taken about a month later but the key elements remains the same. In this photo, the sun has dipped below the horizon to camera left but is still illuminating the tops of the clouds. The moon is already bright in the sky.
With the near daily storms that passed in the afternoons, we were often treated to wonderful sunsets like this one. The sun has just dipped below the horizon behind the stand of trees, illuminating the clouds from below with a fiery red glow.
