A very interesting evening - August 18 2011

They say that variety is the spice of life - well this evening, August 18 2011 - certainly had enough variety.  Pat was looking across Holmes Lake very early in the evening, and noticed sailboats that appeared to be racing.  She called me over to our sliding glass door that leads out to our 3rd floor deck to see them.  Of course I couldn't just step out on the deck without my camera and so the saga began.  I started taking pictures of the sailboats as I could see them passing through the breaks in the trees and the following pictures show you what transpired.

This was all very interesting and Pat suggested that we go over to the lake to get a closer look.  She felt that if it was a sailboat race we would have a much better view, and might be able to get some good pictures.  There was a kind-of mist in the air, as you can see, but it was so neat to see the sail boats on Holmes Lake with our Capital Building in the background.  As you can see the sky was starting to get a glow about it.

Along the way we saw several small ducks standing on one leg on rocks near the shore.

Since the storm clouds were gathering, we headed back to our apartment for a more protected view of the approaching storm.  I went back out on our 3rd floor deck to see if I could get some storm pics before it got too dark.  I noticed a pink glow on the horizon above the lake so I took a picture of it with the trees on the horizon line .

The very next picture I took revealed storm clouds above and the sun set coming down out of them.  That looked pretty neat as you can see below.

I decided to shoot some additional sunset pics as I do enjoy the great views we have for them from our 3rd floor deck.  The following is a series of the August 18 2011 sunset as it progressed.

Finally the sun went down beyond the horizon still leaving a bit of a glow; the storm clouds looking more threatening above it.  The mood of the evening had now changed by the gathering of clouds all around us, as you can see from the pictures below.

Right after that last picture shown above, looking north on 70th, the sky's opened up and a torrential down pour was on us with lightning popping all around. Tornado clouds were spotted north of us; and many people in the immediate area, Lincoln and Lancaster County, lost their power.  Fortunately we didn't lose power and really didn't sustain any losses.

Now it is just past midnight and this very interesting evening of August 18th is history.  The rain has stopped for now and the winds have calmed a bit; there still appears to be some active lightning to the north and west of us, but I think the worst of the storm has passed by us.  Hopefully you found my evening interesting.  Thanks for visiting my blog.