A Stormy Night in October

Lightning crashes down over Pittsburgh

The last thing we expected when I met up with Crunch on Friday was that we’d be shooting a heavy thunderstorm as it raged over the city. It’s October for goodness sake…we’ve been spending more time planning out trips to photograph the changing leaves in Pennsylvania than keeping an eye on the weather, which in retrospect is probably why Friday night’s storm surprised us. We were driving through the North Shore, trying to decide on something interesting to photograph when we noticed the flashes of lightning to the South. Despite my complete lack of preparation (and zero rain-gear for the cameras), we hurriedly found a tall parking garage with a Southern-facing view and got setup and started capturing a timelapse.

Heavy rain is illuminated for a fraction of a second by the lightning behind the city

The storm weakened once it had passed over the city and started to rain itself out. Crunch was pointed North and got some great lightning shots of his own while I was focused on capturing the low cloud-deck washing over the buildings downtown.

The Radar from Friday’s storm, courtesy of RadarScope

After the storm died down, we packed up and headed across the river(s) and setup to capture another timelapse of the Incline and the Friday night traffic rushing over the bridges. I’ve posted the timelapses from Friday night below, please keep in mind they are completely unedited: