This photographer chases monsoon storms all over Arizona

Monsoon storms are finally bringing us some rain this week, but Lori Grace Bailey has been zig-zagging the state for weeks now — chasing the storms in hopes of capturing the perfect bolt of lightning, haboob or supercell with her camera.

She is a professional photographer and storm chaser in southern Arizona who has actually been struck by lightning — but not in the process of chasing a storm. The Show spoke with her more about it all.

Lori Grace Bailey

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Handout

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s begin with just like a a taste of what life is like this time of year for you, because it’s monsoon season. This is like when you are on high alert, right? What’s it like?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Sure. I just have to admit, like, every single day is exhausting. But at the same time, you know, when you get to pursue your passion, you get it done, right? You pursue the things that you love, and you don’t get tired of doing the things you love.

LAUREN GILGER: So you are watching the radars, doing some meteorology in this, right? And literally just going where the storms are every day.

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. It’s all about forecasting, targeting. You know, you need to have that dedication if you really want to get beautiful shots like that. You can wait for them to come to you, but I don’t know how many days, you know, you’re going to have to wait. And when they do come, they’re still spectacular. Every place in Arizona ends up with a spectacular shot. But I want to get more.

So I’m willing to drive the distance. Unfortunately, it sometimes it takes me to the Arizona-New Mexico state line, like it did the other day with that huge dust storm slash haboob that came across the highway. And got off the highway, shot it safely, and I got to provide some ground information, some ground truth to the National Weather Service as a trained severe storm spotter.

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s talk about how you got into storm chasing, because I know you’ve kind of had other lives, other careers, but you’ve always, it sounds like, loved the weather in a way. Like, this is part of your roots.

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Absolutely. You know, I grew up in El Paso, Texas, so not the same desert, the Chihuahuan Desert, but my mother would always take me to the park, you know, when she could. And we would just stare at the clouds, and my love for weather, my affinity for storms really happened back when I was a kid.

And not until like around 2015 when I started to realize, hey, I can point these really cool cameras at the sky and capture what we as Arizonans always have been watching with our own eyes, and to be able to capture that and share that with the world. People go, “I did not know that that’s what you could see in Arizona. I just thought it was dusty and hot.” And that’s farther from the truth.

LAUREN GILGER: So how do you prepare when you spot a storm on the radar and you start driving toward it? What do you bring? What are you getting ready for?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: You know, I’m trying to look at the weather models a few days out. I’m trying to figure out not only where I want to go, but the kind of shots that I’m after, because I’ve been doing this for so long, I just don’t want to get a a picture of a lightning bolt. I really want to capture the essence of Arizona.

And so I have a bucket list of shots that I’m trying to get. And so I will forgo a a decent storm to try and get that epic color, that sensational color that we see on a on a sunset storm. Every Arizonan knows what that looks like. Doesn’t always happen, but I’m always trying to to pick that forecast. And then I get out there and I just watch the storms.

LAUREN GILGER: There have got to be some kind of major risks involved in this. Like, have you ever come close to some pretty serious incidents, accidents, etc.?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Absolutely, Lauren. You know, there is an inherent risk to storm chasing, and when friends or, you know, tour groups want to go out with us and and take a look at all of this stuff, you have to know the dangers. And unfortunately, I don’t want to see other people injured by this stuff. And and I mitigate risk, you know. As a as a former law enforcement officer, we learn about mitigating risks, and it’s it’s no different with storm chasing. And I know that I can bring that ground truth to also warn others as well.

My biggest fear isn’t the bolts of lightning, even though I’ve been struck by lightning. My biggest fear is actually the flooding, you know? Turn around, don’t drown. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was safe, and as I was driving away from the storm, the next wash to my north or wherever was, you know, was full. And I just realized I was stuck kind of on an island until the storm until the waters passed. When that happens, it’s game over. Yeah, yeah, it’s game over.

I am not going to drive in that. It terrifies me. And so I want to avoid flooding. Of course, I want to avoid getting struck by lightning again. But I know that sounds crazy.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I mean, as you mentioned there, you have survived a lightning strike before, which is obviously incredibly rare, but wild. I mean, what do you remember of that? How do you think that’s impacted your desire to go out and capture images of lightning now? Like, there’s got to be a connection there, right?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Yeah, so I, you know, I was on duty, actually, and I was outside, you know, during a thunderstorm and in the late-day monsoon. And a bolt hit the vehicle, I think, and I was standing outside of it. And the next thing I remember is a week, a minute later, another officer’s like telling me to get up and get to my car because I was at a different car, and and it’s pouring rain.

So I like to tell people when I tell the story, which has happened I’ve told the story a thousand times, but I tell them and I start off with it was a revolting experience, you know, bolts. Terrible joke, I know. Rimshot.

But all in all, I just remember it hurt a lot. I hurt a lot afterwards from all the soreness, and the short-term memory loss just really is debilitating, and you have to try to work around that.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s a crazy thing to have happened to you. So I have to ask, because your history’s in law enforcement, you’re a storm chaser now. I mean, do you think there’s something in your personality that sort of draws you to these kind of extreme careers?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: You know, I I think so. And I think that, you know, being in law enforcement, I think that there is an element of being an adrenaline junkie. So, you know, I think that that is true.

But you know, Lauren, something last night as I was driving home from probably one of my best shots ever near Sierra Vista, something called a bolt from the blue. You might want to go down that rabbit hole. Sometimes lightning strikes miles away from the parent storm. And I actually captured one of these because my camera happened to be shooting where it wasn’t supposed to be, and I still captured this bolt shooting way out of the storm, and it’s just such an incredible bucket-list to capture.

And on the way home, I was thinking, why am I still doing this? You know, and what I think it comes down to is that, you know, I’m a little older in life now, and I think it’s just the way that I’m trying to live my best life, you know? I really think that this challenge, it continues to challenge me, and I want to suck the marrow out of life, you know, because it’s just so short.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I mean, so there must be something about lightning in particular that fascinates you, especially having been hit by it, right?

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Yeah, yeah. And it was, yeah, it was even beforehand. You know, there’s something that truly is sensational, and and it it’s almost magical when you’re standing out there and you see lightning. But beyond the lightning, it’s it’s that sunset, that Arizona sunset coupled with the Arizona skies, and then you do bring in that color, and then you couple that with a sunset storm. You know, it’s a chef’s kiss of photography.

So we have people all over the world that come to Arizona to chase the monsoon. I don’t know if you knew that, but there are hundreds of people that come here. And I have the privilege of living in what I call Monsoon Central, living in Rio Rico. We get that here.

LAUREN GILGER: Tell us about a favorite shot, a favorite moment, maybe this season in in shooting a monsoon. You talked about just a bucket-list item you just got the other day, but I’m looking at your Instagram feed here. There are so many.

LORI GRACE BAILEY: Yes, yes. Like I said, I captured that bolt from the blue yesterday. That has always been a bucket list, but there’s something they’re called transient luminous events, also known as TLEs. And here in southern Arizona, it’s a hidden secret that if you look at storms in Mexico, you know, those nights where it’s clear in Arizona, but you look down to the south and 1, 2, 300 miles away, you see the flickering of all these storms deep over the Sierra Madre Occidentals.

The best thing about that is you can use a a camera and point down there and actually capture something called a sprite or a blue jet. And these are essentially upward atmospheric lightning. And I’ve captured so many images of those. Those are also on my Instagram, a few of those.

And it’s just amazing to be able to be one of the few people in all of existence to have captured and seen something like that. So that’s always a bucket list, seeing those type of things.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, we’ll leave it there for now. I hope you have an amazing monsoon season. That is Lori Grace Bailey, a professional photographer and storm chaser, who lives in southern Arizona. Lori, thank you so much for coming on The Show. I really appreciate it.

LORI GRACE BAILEY: It’s been a pleasure, Lauren. Thank you.