With the wet season drawing to a close, Kym Perrin was on high alert for promising clouds when she spotted a monster storm brewing from the balcony of her apartment in Darwin.
“I was inside with the air-con on, and I heard thundering outside and I was like, ‘Oh goody’”, she said.
“I picked up my phone, went to the BOM Weather app and checked the rain radar.
“There was a really interesting structure sort of moving up, and there were bits of orange in it, so I knew this was going to be good.”
The keen photographer quickly gathered her photography drone and ran down the street from her home to capture the storm in all its glory.
Sending her drone – which she affectionately calls Dwayne – into the sky, Kym hunted for the best angle of the spectacle.
“Initially, I was facing towards the ocean, and it was just blue skies and sun,” she said.
“But when I panned around, and as everything came into view, a massive shelf cloud was just there, and the sun was projecting onto the rain curtain, and there was a little bit of a rainbow.
“The more I panned around the more I could see, it was just the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Thunderstorms form when warm, moisture-laden air is forced to rise high into the atmosphere.
The air cools as it ascends, causing water vapour to condense into liquid drops, producing cloud.
When lightning discharges within the storm cloud or to the ground, a resulting explosive expansion of air creates the sound of thunder.
