In a previous post I wrote how the North American Monsoon (NAM) was very late getting started in July. Fortunately, once started, it resulted in normal precipitation amounts for the month of August. Here are photographs and discussion of some of the events during the month.

08 August 2023

Late afternoon storms developed west and southwest of Flagstaff and moved to the east. This presented an opportunity for getting rainbow images. As it turns out, the storms that came after the rainbow were pretty interesting with great structure and colors, as well as lightning.

09 August 2023

Strong storms developed west of Flagstaff so I visited the Kachina Wetlands to photograph the approach of the storms. These storms produced a strong outflow with a shelf cloud. There was some weak storm rotation noted by Doppler radar.

10 August 2023

I traveled to Sedona hoping for lightning or rainbows and got neither. But the sunset was pretty nice.

11 August 2023

Thunderstorms to the east and northeast of Flagstaff produced a strong outflow boundary moving westward. I went to Marshall Lake southeast of town to get both photographs and time-lapse video. The outflow was meteorologically interesting but not very photogenic. The sunset colors, however, were beautifully reflected in the still waters of Marshall Lake.

15 August 2023

This was a mountain biking day and I stopped in the Dry Lake Hills area to enjoy the water and reflections of clouds. The small lake often has water after a wet winter or an extended rainy period.

16 August 2023

Another afternoon spent in Sedona looking for rainbows and lightning. Brief heavy rain fell across Sedona causing the Red Rocks to glisten in the afternoon sunlight. As the storm moved on I switched to an ultra-wide lens to capture a panorama of the area. Later, a strong thunderstorm to the southwest of Sedona beckoned and there was plenty of nearby lightning (but not too near!). And then the Sun dropped below the clouds for just a few minutes resulting in a very nice sunset.

18 August 2023

Although I spent the afternoon at Grand Canyon photographing faint rainbows the most interesting image was of a thunderstorm north of Valle during twilight. A lightning bolt would have been nice.

19 August 2023

Thunderstorms produced copious lightning while south of Grand Canyon, none while traversing the canyon, and lots of lightning when they were over the Kaibab Plateau. This is a composite of a few images of the lightning on the North Rim.

22 August 2023

Wupatki National Monument is always a great place for photography. This day presented nice sunset colors on a distant thunderstorm that was located between Sedona and Flagstaff.

31 August 2023

My destination was Grand Canyon but storms forming north of the San Francisco Peaks provided an opportunity to photograph lighting over the grasslands of the Monument. Satisfied with some early lightning, I continued on to Navajo Point in Grand Canyon where thunderstorms east of the canyon posed with Desert View Watchtower. My other goal was to capture a Moonbow. The Moon was just a day past full and would rise shortly after sunset. And there was a Moonbow but the storms were distant so the bow was small and faint.

Time-lapse video of lightning, clouds, and a Moonbow over Grand Canyon.

August was a good month for photographing monsoon storms.