posted on Jan, 17 2011 @ 07:02 PM
reply to post by Skippy1138
You need to wait until May before photographing the base Generally there is snow on Tikaboo though March and often April. You may not see it from
Tikaboo Valley, but you will encounter snow on the trail. There is a slight risk of avalanche. I don't think the snow gets that high. However, the
hike is difficult with snow on the ground. Actually, it is difficult without snow on the ground.
The sun angle isn't the greatest until late May if you want the old A-12 hangars illuminated. However, the later you wait, the greater the chance
of encountering lightning. That is why most shots from Tikaboo are done in either May or September, but not mid year. As it happened to turn out, I
got good weather in July 2010, but lightning interrupted my shoot two days after the other photographer. In the summer, you need so much water that I
prefer to make two trips. One to drop off the water and tent, then the second trip carrying the photographic gear. It was on the second trip that the
lightning storm approached.
Accuweather does a decent job predicting the chance of lightning. I now check it before doing the hike. For the hike I did in July 2010, it predicted
a moderate chance of lightning two days after my hike. There were only a few thunderbolts, but the prediction was impressive. FWIW, every lightning
storm I've watched go over Tikaboo has approached from the west.
The Nevada Test Site, (now N2S2), carefully monitors lightning over the region with a network of magnetometers. There is even real time monitoring,
though the hardware was down all last year.
sord lightning
You can see one of the sensors on this page:
back gate