June 5th 2013 was a very hot day with temps peaking at 25 degrees C across N. Ireland in conjunction with intense sunshine all day with streets of convective clouds aloft boiling rapidly in the wonderful heat. I was on the road with the intention of storm chasing however my attention got distracted by distant smoke while I was on the main road between Cookstown and Omagh so I turned off onto the narrow country roads and chased after this fire instead which turned out to be a very good decision. My Mother, our pet Dog Rua and I spent the entire day documenting this entire event from various locations in the countryside and on the mountains. This turned into the largest wild fire of the season in N. Ireland (at time of writing) which burned furiously for hours rite through until near sunset with huge billowing towers of white, black, orange and yellow smoke, I even observed multiple rotating smokenadoes and three dust devils while this fire raged across the dry land getting very close to several homes in the area and burning trees until it extended over five miles in length, fifty firefighters battled the blaze to get it under control. This was a dramatic, exciting, and very hot photo shoot, my arms were red when I got home due to the sunburn from doing so much photography, read the report for more information. * All images are available for sale in the form of photo prints, canvas or digital files for licensing, if you are interested in a purchase simply drop me an email. |