Summertime and the living is easy... (or so the song goes)

The summer, so far, has been wetter and much warmer than normal. The heat helps generate thunderstorms across the plains. Storms can bring scary evenings or if they abate soon enough, beautiful sunsets and sunrises.. Such was the case on Thursday, July 18th 2019.  I put Chuck the Camera-Drone up in the air a couple of times between cells of rain moving through. Some of the resulting photos show some really stunning colors and contrasts.  If you zoom in, you can maybe see some lightning in the clouds and features of the now soaked ground below. Almost all of these photos were taken at just under 400' altitude, in and around our summer home in Kenyon MN.
I am posting in the order the photos were taken - so as you progress through the photos, the evening in moving in.. I have to tell you that in all, I took 60 photos of these cells with Chuck and it was very difficult to select photos to post here,


Looking east at the passing cell over Kenyon.


Looking back over Kenyon, we take a 180 Panorama. That puffy grey cloud is actually only a couple hundred feet higher than Chuck and about 500-1000 feet away.


I had Chuck way too close to this cell. There were sparks of lightning visible which I could not really catch without time-lapse and the winds were too variable to do that.






I took a few more shots at this little Thunderstorm Wannabe before I retreated Chuck to a safer distance to the west.


Looking back to the west while another quick moving cell boils up alongside a competing sunset.


Looking west, we take a 180 degree Panorama. Clearing towards the north (right) and very unsettled to the south.





This cell is approaching quickly and I can see in my viewfinder that Chuck is starting to see rain - so we will retreat back to the hanger (house) until this cell passes and hope for a rainbow at Sunset.


Chuck - warming up in the driveway with a fresh battery so we can go up and take a look around...


Oh boy!  Our first glimpse of the coming sunset!


Looking back over our shoulder we check out the cell that is just leaving us. The sky seems to be on fire in places as the thunderstorm continues to rumble and show it's power to the land below.  Kenyon is a small town and just a bit more quiet right now..






Our sunset is developing quite nicely. Note the scud clouds at the very top of this photo. These clouds are in the trail of the previous thunder cell and are still precipitating lightly.









Wow - How about that!  At this point, we've been in the air a bot over 20 minutes and are about 1/2 mile away. Chuck tells me his battery has 25% life left in him and that we need to head back east for home...  So we turn around and see this below!






We're only about 100' up and directly over the drive... Err... Runway we took off from.  Chuck is starting to whine, but I tell him - just a couple more buddy and I'll give you a long rest on the dining room table!







Chuck tells me he is landing whether I like it or not.  He has less than 5% left and he is spent...
I spin him around for one final shot at the sunset below and he landed directly in front of me a few moments later.  I swear I heard him curse me as his motors spun down to silent...


More coming soon here or on Facebook!