Monsoon V, The Stunning Beauty of the American West Summer Skies Captured in a Gorgeous Timelapse

In the fifth installment of his ongoing “Monsoon” series, photographer Mike Olbinski again employed his sharpened storm-chasing skills across the American west and southwest to create an absolutely stunning video that celebrates giant dust storms, intense lightning strikes, beautiful sunsets and even gorgeous green clouds spitting out copious pellets of hail.

My original plan this past summer was to collect as much footage as normal, but to not put out a “Monsoon V” until 2019 when I had two years worth of crazy haboobs and lightning to make it truly spectacular. But the monsoon had different plans and put on a pretty dang good show in 2018 ….Sprinkled in there…more dust storm, some at night, spectacular lightning, and tons of microbursts and stormy clouds, plus a few rotating supercells to put some icing on the cake. It was one of the best monsoon seasons I’ve chased…

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Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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