Super Mega Bolt Hits The Monterey Bay

It all began the night of August 15, 2020. Lightning is extremely rare in the Monterey Bay so when I saw flashes on the horizon around 11pm, I grabbed my gear and headed to my nearby beach where I stayed past 3am until the storm had passed over the Monterey Peninsula and headed out to sea. I got many great shots that night, but this was by far the biggest blast which included 65mph wind. Although it's hardly noticeable, the surf that night included bioluminescence. The August 2020 California lightning wildfires (also referred to as the August lightning siege or August wildfire siege) were a series of 650 wildfires that ignited across Northern California in mid-August 2020 that began in the early morning of August 16, due to a siege of dry lightning from rare, massive summer thunderstorms, which were caused by an unusual combination of very hot, dry air at the surface, dry fuels, and advection of moisture from the remains of Tropical Storm Fausto northward into the Bay Area. These fires burned between 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) to 2,100,000 acres (8,500 km2) within a 2–3 week period. The August Complex Fire set a record for the single-largest wildfire in the modern history of California, reaching a total area burned of 471,185 acres (1,907 km2).