STS-128 Space Shuttle Discovery Launch View South Florida

August 29, 2009 – The central Florida weather cleared in time for STS-128 Space Shuttle Discovery Launch at 11:59pm ET last night. All day Florida saw lightning storms and heavy rains as an upper-level system moved in from the Gulf of Mexico. Weather was the main concern for NASA throughout the day, as it wasn’t clear if the storms and clouds would clear in time for the late night launch. Nothing weather-wise was associated with Tropical Storm Danny that was well offshore northeast of Florida.

By mid evening skies began to clear rapidly from west to east as the upper-level weather system pulled all the associated storm and clouds eastward out into the Atlantic. Skies cleared and Discovery launched on time without any delays.

I planned to attend the launch up at the Cape, but had to cancel do to obligations early Saturday morning. The picture above was taken from my front lawn in Okeechobee County Florida, about 100 miles south of the launch site. It’s a time exposure using a Canon EOS 5D.