31/52 - Stormy Sunset

Throughout the late summer in Arizona, it is pretty typical for a thunderstorm to develop almost every night.  Some are longer than others and some don't amount to much, but they come through quite a bit.  We were in Phoenix the first week of August and got to see these storms 5 of the 7 nights we were there.  I guess this time of the year is their 'rainy' season, so they get pretty frequent storms.  They don't hit the city very much because the heat radiated off of the concrete downtown rises and pushes the storms away.  But, if you're in any of the outside suburbs, you usually get hit.

We were on the north side of Phoenix in Scottsdale, and I guess we were far enough away from downtown because we got hit a lot. 

One of the last couple of days we were there, we got back from dinner around sunset and I thought it looked really pretty with all of the clouds coming in for the nightly storm.  So, I went in, grabbed my camera, tripod and shutter release cable, and headed out onto the balcony.  As the sun set further and the colors really started to come out, I snapped off quite a few pictures.  I got a couple of panoramic shots of the sunset which turned out nicely, but this is one of my favorite shots from the evening.  The clouds coming in really made the colors pop and you can see several different areas in the frame where it is actually raining. 
I got a few more pictures of the crazy clouds that were coming through and even a few pictures of lightning, but none of those were good enough to really post.

It was fun standing around for the hour or so that I did, just watching the sunset and trying to get different images that really showed how pretty it was. 

Let me know what you think.

T.

P.S.
Here is the sunset panoramic picture that I got. You can see more of the rain in this picture in several different areas.