A hot night with thunderbolt madness.

Phew.. the summer is raging here in Bengalooru, and the showers are showing mercy every once in a couple of days. The temperature has been hovering around the 35 degree mark, and it's very very humid. Monday night was so hot, I was sitting half naked in my room with the fan running at the maximum speed the motor could manage, the windows and doors were open, but I was dripping buckets.

Yesternight was something different though. The air cooled down at around 8pm, and much expected showers burst down. By 9 the winds were packing a mean punch, flinging windows shut, and reportedly "knocked down several trees in Bangalore".
The dark sky showed unusually persistent lightning, with high frequency in some areas, and brilliant episodes at others.

I managed to capture a few streaks with a Finepix E550. Manual settings with aperture at F2.8 (biggest available on this), and shutter speed at half a second. I chose continuous shoot mode with last 4 pictures to be saved.

A lone streak

Some intense action

The leader of this bolt is the last place you would want to be.

Today's paper reported that a tree in Rajajinagar (nearby) broke into fire after a solid strike.. hehe Amma Nature sure knows how to balance hot and cool!