A long, snaking cloud to ground lightning bolt comes out of the storm cloud toward the camera before striking a residential area of Tucson, Arizona in this time exposure photograph. Awesome and intense thunderstorms with powerful gust fronts, heavy rain, hail and lightning are common over the Arizona Desert during the summer months. Southwestern weather patterns create thunderstorms by pulling the fuel, moist air, either from the Pacific Baja side or the Gulf of Mexico and mixing it with the dry hot air rising up from the heated desert floor. Lightning is beautiful, but dangerous.