The day begins with coffee, Weather Underground, and the crossword. It’s important to know what’s happening outside as you plan the day and week ahead. The high desert has great vistas whose beauty is in the sky and clouds.
This particular morning there was a notice of thunderstorms on the forecast app. Always on the look out for weather picture opportunities, this storm was scheduled for late afternoon and seemed too good to pass up.
Deciding to document the storm we head east toward the Fort Rock area. This part of the high desert has a great expanse of sky. The plan was to get ahead of the storm and be set up to catch the action.
We opt for the Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge, offering a perfect location, just off Highway 31 near the the town of Summer Lake and to the north end of the town’s namesake.
This put us exactly where we hoped to be…surrounded by storm clouds. Thunder never materialized and for the most part we avoided rain and hail, all the time capturing images of the three or four different storm cells pushing up against the mountains to the east and west of us.
As icing on the cake, migratory birds were paddling around in the water ways. I guess the only down side were black clouds of mosquitoes. Even then the storm’s wind helped disperse the pests.
Finally, on the way back home and closer to Fort Rock, we managed to catch a tremendous sunset. A great ending to a day of weather watching (check out newest photo essay for more images of the storm).
