Sunday, July 26, 2009

Lightning & Choppers

The last few days have been unbelievable! On Friday I zipped into town and took shots of the helicopters dipping into the canal. The Lillooet Fire (now officially the McLean Fire) has grown to 600 hectares but has mostly climbed over the mountain and Lillooet seems to be out of danger at the moment.

Chopper Action


Seton Lake is very smoky and I gather the fire flared up again last night.

Seton Lake Lillooet Fire


It's the first time I've seen the fire up close. This picture was taken at the beginning of the bridge into town.

Chopper Action


It's a wonder the pilots are able to see in all the smoke.

Chopper Action


Last night we had over 8 hours of thunder & lightning, and then rain would pour down in buckets. I ended up taking video and extracting the pictures because it wasn't easy taking stills. Not the best quality pictures but they show what we saw until well after midnight. Earlier the sound of the thunder made you cover your ears but as the storm moved towards Lytton the thunder wasn't near as loud. The storm caused a few more fires and sadly we are expecting another thunderstorm this afternoon.

Lightning July 2009


Lightning July 2009


For more pictures of the choppers and lightning visit my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kansasa/

I put together a quick video at YouTube:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are such a good photographer, I really appreciate your hotos. I'm retired and disabled and it adds so much to my day to see your photos,and read your blog.
Gail

Moonshadow said...

GREAT pictures! Worse than the smoke for the choppers are the updrafts caused by the heat from the fires. Scary stuff. Isn't awful that the rain is welcome in hopes of putting out the fires but along with comes lightening that starts more fires?

KansasA said...

Thanks Gail, I'm glad you enjoy my pictures and my blog :)

Anonymous said...

Quite the video... AB

Anonymous said...

Love the pictures.

Jackie said...

The audio on the video was great! Yeah! I saw that !
I hope that you have lots of rain and little to no lightening!