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Montana Fireflies

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I found myself camping in Eastern Montana after a day of chasing storms. As darkness fell, little green flickers of light started to emerge. At first I thought I was just seeing things. Normally fireflies are only found in the more wet and humid climates of the Midwest and Eastern US. I’ve previously photographed them in Illinois and Iowa. But the weather this year has been anything but normal on the Northern Plains. Excessive rainfall nearly every day over the last month has evidently caused fireflies (also called lightning bugs) to appear farther west than usual. As another round of thunderstorms approached they started to glow even more before wind shut them down for the night. The Tongue River near Miles City was running high and fast. In fact the water rose several inches while I was shooting this, lapping at my tripod. This is a composite image showing 30 minutes of firefly activity, combined with a single image of the lightning and stars.

Copyright
Kevin Palmer Photography
Image Size
6018x4012 / 16.6MB
Keywords
Contained in galleries
Montana, Storms, Best of 2023
I found myself camping in Eastern Montana after a day of chasing storms. As darkness fell, little green flickers of light started to emerge. At first I thought I was just seeing things. Normally fireflies are only found in the more wet and humid climates of the Midwest and Eastern US. I’ve previously photographed them in Illinois and Iowa. But the weather this year has been anything but normal on the Northern Plains. Excessive rainfall nearly every day over the last month has evidently caused fireflies (also called lightning bugs) to appear farther west than usual. As another round of thunderstorms approached they started to glow even more before wind shut them down for the night. The Tongue River near Miles City was running high and fast. In fact the water rose several inches while I was shooting this, lapping at my tripod. This is a composite image showing 30 minutes of firefly activity, combined with a single image of the lightning and stars.