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Then these would be my photos of a very photogenic and completely harmless cumulonimbus over the Everglades swamp from behind my home in Weston, Florida. This is an example of why Florida has more thunderstorms than any state in the nation: warm humid air gathers over the southern third of the peninsula each afternoon and begins to rise. The rising air causes pressure to fall over the land, and a sea breeze moves in from the ocean, lending the element of lift to the already moist and unstable air. It rains almost every afternoon in the south Florida summer, and there are often storms like this one, slow moving beasts that dump rain and hurl lightning at golfers and fisherman. Mostly, they have said their peace by nightfall. This storm above, however, taken in August 1997, lingered on.

The small storm above is another example of sea breeze convection, with a radar shot showing the location of the storm and the red dot on the Doppler image being the approximate location of my home. The canoe in the second image was an unexpected surprise. September 1997.

The arcus clouds of an inbound storm can cast a strange reflection in the water below, adding another bizarre dimension to an already impressive sight. The lowering on the far right was just that--a wall cloud look-alike. There was no rotation involved with either of these storms.