Feast or Famine at the Grand Canyon

Sunset Lightning, Desert View, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 800
f/5.6
20 seconds

We had reached the final night of this year’s second and final Grand Canyon monsoon photo workshop. To say that I’d spent the weeks leading up to this year’s workshops monitoring the Grand Canyon weather forecast, praying for the monsoon storms that bring lightning, would be a gross understatement—but despite all this vigilance and no small amount of strategic scrambling during the workshop, we’d come down to the wire with little to show for our effort.

The sad fact is, this year’s monsoon rains came late—very, very late. So when the storms finally arrived about a week before the start of the first workshop, I was relieved. And when the National Weather Service actually started including a chance of thunderstorm in the forecasts for the first workshop’s earliest days, I became downright optimistic. Too optimistic, it turns out.

Such is the dilemma of storm chasing at Grand Canyon. The primary goal in these monsoon workshops, more important even than photographing lightning, has to be safety (believe it or not, some in my groups try to argue with me on this). Fortunately, Grand Canyon’s expansive views are tailor made for photographing lightning from a (relatively) safe distance—usually we’re targeting cells either far up- or down-canyon, or across the canyon. Our lightning is distant enough that more often than not we don’t even hear its thunder. But since we never want to be in the storm we’re photographing, it’s actually possible to have too much lightning.

One thing I’ve observed in the dozen or so years I’ve been chasing lightning at Grand Canyon is how to translate the weather forecast into our actual odds for photographing lightning. Believe it or not, my best lightning success happens when the forecast calls for a 20 to 50 percent chance of thunderstorms, with 40 percent the sweet spot; the odds start to shrink significantly once the forecast chance of thunderstorms exceeds 50 percent. In other words, while 0 percent sucks. so does 100 percent.

This year’s two Grand Canyon monsoon workshops delivered a double dose of lightning’s feast or famine fickleness. Both groups got a heaping helping of too much lightning on one end of the workshop, balanced by a starvation diet on the other.

The first workshop saw clouds with modest lightning potential on the first night, but had to settle instead for a spectacular sunset. No problem, the sunset was a great consolation prize and we were excited by the 50 percent thunderstorm chance forecast for day two. But when I woke the next morning to see that the chances had bumped to 70 percent, I was less than thrilled. I knew it could be great, but I also knew that it could turn out to be a very long, frustrating day.

After sunrise that second morning we returned to the hotel for a break followed by an image review. At about 11:30 my lightning app showed storms approaching the canyon, so we aborted the image review and bolted (pun unavoidable) for the rim. We parked near Mather Point and set up at a spot down the rim a short distance, setting our sights on a promising cell approaching from the west (down canyon). Unfortunately, we also heard thunder in the south and I knew there was another cell bearing down from behind that bore watching.

The rain hadn’t started and the conditions looked extremely promising for lightning over the canyon, so we stayed put until we became aware of the lightning sneaking up behind us—counting out 15-20 seconds between the lightning and its thunder, I knew it was about 4 miles away, maybe a little closer. When the wind picked up and the first large raindrops started splatting the pavement, I told the group it’s time to bolt (there’s that word again). But the parking lot was several hundred yards from our position, so most of that sprint happened in an intense downpour.

By the time we made it to the cars, the lightning was landing within 2 miles and everyone was thoroughly drenched. We were also quite invigorated because lightning will do that. For more than an hour we waited out the storm in the cars, taking in the action through fogged glass. When the rain finally slowed and it felt safe enough to return to the rim, the depleted storm had moved east—it was out of sight and we were out of luck.

We spent the rest of that afternoon chasing lightning up and down the South Rim. We saw lots of lightning in our travels, some frighteningly (thrillingly) close to the road, but never found a vantage point far enough from the action to safely set up for more than a few minutes at a time. By the time we migrated to the North Rim for the workshop’s final two days, we were in lightning famine mode. Long story short, despite all that early activity, only a few people in that first group finished the workshop with a lightning image, and most were completely shut out. Thanks to the rain-scoured air, the first group did enjoy a spectacular Milky Way shoot our final night on the North Rim. And between the opening sunset and the Milky Way shoot, plus several other nice opportunities, I know everyone got some fantastic images, but not the lightning they’d hoped for. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

In more than 2/3 of my Grand Canyon workshops, everyone in the group gets at least one nice lightning image. But the forecast entering the second workshop promised nothing but clear skies from beginning to end—full-on lightning famine mode. It was starting to look more and more like my recent streak of many (5? 6?) years of at least one group (and usually both) getting good lightning was about to come to a crashing end.

At this point I started to wax philosophical, reminding myself (and all who would listen) how beholden we nature photographers are to the capricious whims of Mother Nature. This isn’t a complaint so much as it is an observation, because Nature’s mercurial behavior, that seems to relish thwarting even the best conceived plans, can also turn on a dime to deliver absolute euphoria when we least expect it.

Though the second group did enjoy a nice Milky Way shoot, augmented by a surprise cameo by a most unnatural visitor, our two days on the North Rim turned into a complete lightning starvation diet. For a couple of reasons I won’t take the time to detail here, the North Rim is typically better than the South Rim for lightning success. But following our North Rim failure, and with the workshop scheduled to end Thursday morning on the South Rim, my hopes were dimming fast.

Group 2 started Sunday afternoon and I tried my best to give them realistic lightning expectations. But after waking to my alarm at 4:15 Monday morning, before getting out of bed I checked the NWS forecast and saw that they’d bumped Wednesday from a 0 percent to a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms. Of course Nature and its henchmen (the NWS) love messing with me because I’ve seen these forecasts disappear as suddenly as they appeared, but still… I held my breath checking the forecast again later that morning, but saw that Wednesday’s thunderstorm percentage was now 40—I was suddenly (cautiously) ecstatic. By bedtime it was up to 60%—hmmm… Going from zero-to-sixty in 12 hours might not be so great for my Subaru Outback, but for a thunderstorm forecast that’s a pretty significant change. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on: Nature had enjoyed torturing my first group so much, it going for a reprise of that experience for the second group.

And that’s pretty much what happened. We spent Wednesday, the workshop’s last full day, truncating the image review to chase lightning all around the South Rim, waiting in the cars for the rain to stop while lightning danced all around us without ever getting a good shot at it (sound familiar?). As sunset approached, when it appeared that most of the weather had wrapped up, we stopped chasing and settled in for a nice (fingers crossed) Desert View sunset.

In the parking lot before walking out the rim I told everyone to stick their Lightning Triggers in their camera bags just in case, reminding them (with as much conviction as I could muster) that you never know what’s going to happen and that I’ve been surprised by an unexpected thunderstorm before. “You never know,” I said, with so much sincerity that I almost believed it myself. Almost.

Sunset was indeed nice (understatement)—different than the first group’s opening sunset, but every bit as good. And then something strange happened—we noticed a few marginally promising clouds depositing rain across the canyon. Just in case, we all pulled out our triggers and set up. Unlike the rest of the group, I pointed up Marble Canyon where the clouds looked decent, though slightly less promising, because I liked that composition better (a luxury I can afford because I already have 12 years worth of lightning images). But with my attention directed toward my chosen scene, I soon started hearing the others exclaim about actual lightning across the canyon—the first photographable lightning of the workshop.

I (stubbornly) stayed the course for a couple of minutes, but the excitement I heard from the group was impossible to ignore—when I actually saw a truly spectacular strike across the canyon, I quickly recomposed. We stayed out on the rim until it became too dark to capture canyon detail without blowing out the lightning—maybe until about 20 minutes after sunset. By then I was completely surrounded by ecstatic photographers. This was more of a quality over quantity lightning experience, with maybe a dozen or so truly beautiful strikes (far from a record haul)—each quite brilliant, with many tendrils, and many with multiple strokes—about as good as the quality gets.

Just when I think I have this nature photography thing figured out…

One more thing

The workshop wrapped up after an absolutely epic sunrise the next morning. The lightning forecast for that day was good enough that many of us hung around long enough to photograph more lightning. For Curt (the photographer assisting me) and I, this lightning was skewed more toward quantity than quality— before hitting the road we’d feasted at least 30 more lightning strikes, some quite nice (though not as nice as the prior night). So sated were we by the lightning of last two days, we didn’t even mind that our delayed departure meant spending the night in Barstow (look it up).

Join me for next year’s Grand Canyon adventures

Lightning Explosion, Oza Butte, Grand Canyon North Rim

Sunset Lightning, Desert View, Grand Canyon

Color and Light, Grand Canyon Lightning, Bright Angel Point

Two Strikes, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon

Downpour and Lightning, Desert View, Grand Canyon

Twilight Lightning, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon

Double Strike, Desert View Lightning, Grand Canyon

Sunset Triple Lightning, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon

Multi-Strike Lightning, Vishnu Temple, Grand Canyon

Electric Sunset, Hopi Point Lightning, Grand Canyon

Rain Curtain Lightning, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon

Hand of God, Forked Lightning, Grand Canyon

Lightning Strike, Brahma Temple, Grand Canyon

Cloud-Piercing Lightning, North Rim, Grand Canyon

Parallel Lightning, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon

Lightning V, Grand Canyon

Electric Downpour, Point Imperial Lightning, North Rim, Grand Canyon

Diagonal Lightning Strike, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon

North Rim Lightning Strike, Grand Canyon

2018

Lightning Web, Grand Canyon

Lightning After Sunset, Grandview Point, Grand Canyon

Sunset Lightning, Grand Canyon

Lightning Shadow, Grand Canyon Lodge, North Rim

Direct Hit, South Rim Lightning Strike, Grand Canyon Lodge

Electric Night, Grand Canyon Lodge, North Rim, Grand Canyon

Double Strike, Lightning Over Painted Desert, Grand Canyon

Three Strikes, Lightning and Rainbow from Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon North Rim