Time Lapse of an Arizona Monsoon Storm

Last weekend I was handed a nice bonus with a chance to film a time lapse of an Arizona monsoon storm.  Sunday was looking pretty bleak as far as monsoon weather goes, so this was quite a gift.

Time Lapse of an Arizona Monsoon Storm

I was watching the radar off and on throughout the day hoping to see something pop up. It wasn’t until approximately 5pm that I noticed a band of storms down by Gila Bend that were fast tracking their way north towards downtown Phoenix. I headed out to intercept them with my destination being the Phoenix Sky Harbor parking garage. I could see that the storms were going to pass right over downtown so the garage would provide some shelter from the rain. My goal was to get some up close lightning strikes.

As I made my way up the 101 freeway I could see a small but growing storm cell in my rearview mirror. This cell would later turn into a micro burst causing extensive damage in the Tempe/Mesa area. As I drove out of the rain I could see my target storms beginning to dissipate over Phoenix. I decided to stay the course and figured worst case I could turn my camera back towards Mesa and shoot the rain cell I had just driven through.

Upon arriving at the parking garage I met up with my buddy Bryan Snider. We set up our cameras and began time lapsing the storm over Mesa. What a real beauty it turned out to be. As you can see in the video it had a large rain core and was moving pretty quick to the north.  Once it played out I was able to put my camera on another system to the north that was also dropping a large amount of rain.

What I thought was going to be a bust on Sunday turned out to be a nice little chase day. And the best part was I didn’t have to drive very far to get to a time lapse of an Arizona monsoon storm.