Just before I was going to go to sleep I thought to check the radar. To my surprise there were storms forming in IA and some moving se in NE right for me. With meager moisture I wasn't expecting much but though maybe they could at least contain some infrequent lightning. I kept looking out the window, but wasn't seeing any flashes to the nw. Then finally, flicker! Then a real long gap of nothing before another flicker. That was all I needed to go have a look see. So I headed out and went east into IA where it is flat. Lightning picked up and this unfolded. As soon as I turn south and look west I see the moon shining brightly above the horizon. This as the first little storm moved towards me. I thought, this would be sick if I could get a CG bolt to hit in the shot with the low moon behind it. Soon some clouds started to block the moon out. Notice the flicker of lightning in the upper right. It was raining on me a bit, but I was able to just barely keep the lens dry inside the car. Well at least till the rain picked up, but thankfully the moon was blocked at that point.

Now I really really want to get this kind of shot with a bolt to the ground(CG). If this little storm was capable of getting bolts to the ground, man, they'd have been hitting really really close as it was flickering away directly above me here.

Moon back out as the next little shower/storm moves in behind the first. Again I was like, give me a cg!

A very bright bolt in the air right above me lit up the whole area. The foreground briefly looked like daytime. If it wasn't sprinkling I could have had the camera closer to the window and got those at 10mm.

Facing east now as nothing was left to my west and the moon had set. Omaha is just south of here, so it, along with the power plant, give the clouds some color over long exposures. Pretty much everything on this page was wide open at 400 ISO, often over a minute.

For as close to Omaha as this was(as well as Blair/Cargill plant and Missouri Valley) the sky straight up was extremely clear and dark. These vertical ones were at 10mm, so the top of the frame is pretty much directly overhead.

This is the one good thing about junky, high based, low topped convection. They don't come with a lot of cloud debris, like anvil blow off, to obscure the stars.

One of the very few CGs of the night.

As stormless as it has been in these parts this year, I'll take it.