October Surprise

October Surprise ⚡️

Mikal Jakubal
October 1, 2024

Sandals and shorts are a bad fashion choice for running through the cactus and thorn-filled desert at night. They’re an even worse fashion choice for stepping on large rattlesnakes, which I nearly did, saved only by my phone’s small flashlight.

In the dim light I could see it was shaking its rattle-thingy, but the air blast from the approaching storm cell that was about to blow me off the hill or drench me or electrocute me or all of the above was so loud that it was like trying to hear a cricket in the bathroom while running a blow dryer. Holding the phone extended in front of me in one hand, camera and tripod in the other, I jumped a few feet to the side and continued my frantic descent off the hill. Without a light, I would’ve stepped right on the snake and, well, the night would’ve gone very differently.

I was only in this silly situation because of keraunomaniacal single mindedness: Must. Get. Bolts. Bolts! Bolts! Bolts! It was now dark, well past dumbass-o’clock, as I scurried down, hoping not to encounter another snake or step in a patch of chollas or slip and sprain an ankle or drop my camera.

There was a point earlier, up on the rocky hilltop, where I thought, “If I start down right now, I can put this camera in the truck and still have enough light to go around the hill to retrieve the other camera I set up somewhere over there.” Then again, I could wait just a minute or two longer to see if the storm comes into view from behind the hill and drops any more bolts, however unlikely. “And then I’ll head down. Just another minute or two.” Or two more. 

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I keep a number of weather tabs open and check the forecast at least once per day, sometimes several times, but no convective activity has been predicted for quite some time now. It really did seem like the monsoon season was over. I’d even taken my lightning triggers out of my camera bag, a begrudging acceptance of the obvious.

This morning’s air had felt sticky, heavy, with a light overcast, not the kind of weather I associate with the late September dry heat wave we’ve been in. Prompted by the anomalous humidity, I took a look at the National Weather Service Severe Thunderstorm Outlook page and there it was: a light green overlay covering my small corner of Southern Arizona. Light green means there is a “kinda sorta maybe we don’t know but hey it could happen” chance of thunderstorms somewhere in the area. You just have to keep paying attention and be ready to roll.

Which I did up until about noon when the Doppler radar again showed nothing brewing anywhere. The real-time satellite image for the whole region showed nothing but a little buildup too far to the east to matter. The clouds over town had evaporated. Nothing to see here, folks.

Many hours later I emerged from my office with its darkened windows — better for photo editing — and… Whoa! Storm clouds everywhere! Doppler showed lightning blasting holes in the border down in Organ Pipe National Monument 30 miles away, plus some big cells were building right on top of me.

Six minutes later I was pulling out of the driveway.

Ah, but which way to go!

Two side by side screenshots of the RadarScope weather app showing the Doppler radar images. The first, titled "how it started", shows a black background with multiple small storm cells, indicated by red and yellow cores surrounded by green and blue, each one containing many small lightning bolt icons. The second image is of the same area a couple hours later showing the entire area covered by multiple storm cells that have merged into one large, red and yellow storm front filled with lightning. — Doppler radar screenshots from the RadarScope app. Left: what I saw at 4:55 p.m. when I stepped outside. The blue circle is me in Ajo, underneath that intriguing little cell (which will shortly fizzle, lightning-less). The large cell in the lower right is drenching Lukeville, AZ and is the one I gambled on. The second screenshot, on right, was the radar view the moment I got to the border wall. Note the perfect set-up: a spot mostly out of the rainfall (dark green/blue) and with the cells moving nearly perpendicular to my location. The scale is different, but if you look in the center of the first shot and the upper right of the second, you can see the blue fork in the road at Why, AZ.

My reasoning went something like this: It’ll take me at least 30 minutes to get to a good position for that big storm down by the border, but by then it could be either dissipating or growing. A toss up. There’s another storm cell moving that way from south of Ajo that I could catch from Bates Well Road, but that would be about 15 miles of dirt road to get to the good spot. The right combo there and I could get a sunset rainbow and lightning, looking east across the Valley of the Ajo. But if it fizzled, I’d be stuck way down there. Meanwhile this storm right overhead could blow up, so maybe I should sit tight and get into place for it? I decided on the Lukeville storm, partly because it meant a good road that I could reverse course on easily and partly because any storm in that area will have good surrounding scenery and many location options.  

From the Why, AZ junction, I watched as the storm of my dreams built and died in the distance. I could see the gust front kicking up a massive dust plume, followed by the lightning and then the main rain core, but only the storm’s top was visible over the small ridge that blocked the view across Hwy 85 heading south. By the time I got to my vantage point on that ridge, the best I could get was the nice, post-front landscape that became the header image for this post.  

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Most storm chasing is really storm driving. You need a car so you can move to a new location quickly, but also for safety. Inside a car is the second safest place to be in a lightning storm, a large building being the best. And, for the record: no, the tires don’t insulate you. Rather, the metal shell acts like a Faraday cage and directs the energy over the vehicle’s skin and into the ground. Your car’s electronics might get fried if you get hit and your eardrums might be blown out, but you’ll probably otherwise be okay.  

This particular location, a favorite of mine, is up on a little ridge, a 150-yard hike from the road, at the base of a rocky mini-mountain. It provides a broad view arc from almost Southeast to slightly south of due West. No matter, the storm was spent. I’d missed it by 15 minutes. Hauling the camera bags back to the truck, leaving the cameras set up on their tripods just in case something popped, I got a view around the hill to the northwest of an awesome sunset with a nice small cell dropping bolts every couple minutes. Well sheeee-it!!!!

This prompted a frantic run back up the hill where I grabbed one camera/tripod/trigger combo and ran around the ridge in my shorts-and-sandal desert adventure wear through the cactus-y, sticker-y, loose-stone-y desert. By the time I got to a clear vista, the colors had faded and the cell was half hidden behind the hill, moving southward. I left the camera set up anyway, but was having the worst bout of FOMO. I’d just missed TWO amazing storms right under my nose, each by only a few minutes and probably the last of the year. Well, crap.

The radar showed a very large cell moving my way from behind the ridge to the east. I could hear it booming, but not see it. Simultaneously, the little one behind mini-mountain, the cell I’d just missed with the second camera, was growing and probably visible now from the mini-mountain’s summit. Noting my apparent need to up my cardio game, I made a chest-heaving, leg-burning scramble up the hill with the other camera, only to watch the sun finish setting and taking most of the earlier color with it. Three strikes! Send this rookie to the showers!

So, there I was, up on the rocky summit of Mount Self Pity, thinking I should just accept the storm chaser dunce cap for the day, get back to the truck before dark and pretend I’d never left. But sunk cost fallacy is a helluva drug. “I’ve put this much effort into it and yeah, sure, I’ve totally struck out three times already and nothing in front of me looks that great and it’s getting dark and there’s a big storm about to roll over me… but maybe if I stay here a little longer? Just a few minutes. See what happens. I’ve still got time before dark…”

Of course, it’s only sunk-cost fallacy when continuing on a losing course doesn’t pay off. When it does, it’s “staying the course” or “being dedicated” or whatever. In this case, it was probably more lack of common sense than anything, but after several more rounds of “just another minute or two”, the storm got lit.

I knew I had a number of good strikes in the can and there were clearly more to be had, but now shit was getting serious. Besides darkness having set in for real, the big cell over the mountains was getting close and loud. A small cell was also building right above me, farting out some little inter-cloud bolts. The wind got suddenly fierce, as in, fierce enough cover up a large rattlesnake’s annoyed buzzing as I went into oh-shit mode and scrambled down through rocks and thorns.

The first fat rain drops were hitting as I ran to find the second camera I’d left around the ridge. At least I had a proper headlamp from the truck this time. I found the black camera on it’s black tripod in the black night when the lightning trigger fired a shot and the red LED on the camera lit up.

Without getting snake-bit, cholla-jumped, toe-stubbed, ankle-sprained, flesh-ripped or lightning-crisped, I made the truck thirty seconds before the deluge of both rain and lightning hit.  

Woooo hooo! Wheeeee! I seem to have forgotten the dunce cap up on the hill.

  No cell coverage means no radar app, but from the storm’s trajectory it looked like the border fence area would be a good place to intercept that cell again. I knew exactly where to go.

Predictably, once I had both cameras set up on the road that parallels the border fence, time-lapsing the steady stream of bolts to the west, two Border Patrol vans rolled up to see what I was doing, headlights blowing out my shots as bolts were striking in the distance. The agents were nice enough, but initially tried to tell me I couldn’t be on this road, that I had to be on the parallel, Puerto Blanco Road, 100 yards north. I gave them an over-the-glasses “really guys?” kind of look, pointing out that I wouldn’t be able to get the fence and the bolts in the shot from over there. “Well,” they said, “the Ranger ain’t gonna like it!”

Okay, what they actually said was that if the National Park ranger saw me — the one who doesn’t care and never ever comes out here — he might give me a ticket and then left it at that. I think they felt sheepish for being bureaucratic and ridiculous.

Part of me wants to hide my storm chaser dunce cap and post these few nice shots, letting everyone think I have half a clue what I’m doing. But that misses the whole point. Storm photos are just an excuse for an adventure! And it’s not an adventure if you don’t almost get bit by a snake while running down a desert mountain in sandals in the dark carrying your camera with the sick shots you just got. I’d be happy to not miss so many banger shots and to quit making rookie mistakes like forgetting to turn off auto-focus, but if I nailed every chase, it might get boring and I’d have to take up something like, I dunno, paragliding.

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