Cecil Kop Lightning Strikes
Mutare and Manicaland are continuing to receive erratic rains well below the seasonal average as moist tropical air from the northwest (on which Zimbabwe depends to receive good rainfall) fails to displace the prevailing cooler and drier airflow from the south-east which just produces light rain and drizzle similar to that experienced from the unproductive Guti systems during winter. Sometimes (as during the past two days) the north westerly airflow wins resulting in ‘dry’ thunderstorms at mid-day and early afternoon which are accompanied by dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning strikes usually beyond the immediate areas of rainfall. Two of these are shown happening in the Cecil Kop Nature Reserve on Thursday afternoon. The second illustrates how dangerous it would have been to be out walking on that hillside which is less than a kilometer away from my home in Murambi East. The pictures are two frames from a video recorded while peeping cautiously over the top of my back garden wall.

Hand-held Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact camera in video scene mode

GOM Video Player advanced screen capture. Photoshop Elements 15 - compilation of mosaic using two captured video frames.