I titled today's photo 'Checkpoint Wadi' because when we moved into this concession in western Libya in 1990, this was one of the few routes for travelers to traverse the escarpment.
But looking back I got this fantastic view of the sunlight from the setting sun streaming through the gap in the clouds with sheets of rain from the storm falling just inland from the coast. I once again turned to my Canon S100 to capture the scene. From the features on the ground, the aircraft would have been over or just south of Eisenhower, Lehigh Acres, Florida. You can make out the Gulf coast and the southern end of Estero Bay between the two sheets of rain in the center of the photo.
The cruising speed of a Boeing 737 is a shade over 500 miles per hour (all things being equal) so we'd traveled about eight miles closer to the cloud wall. Add to that the cloud wall was moving west, towards us and that yields the change in the cloud shapes between the two photo-sets.
As we approached the west coast of Florida I saw a wall of cloud to the south-east, pretty much aligned with the coast, illuminated from the setting sun to the west. I shot several frames of the scene with my Canon S100.
The relatively short dusk duration is captured in this image with the yellows of the setting sun to the west and the darkening skies of night to the east.
I captured this sunset a week or two after I crashed the boss's car. I was struck by the cloud formation at the higher altitude. Below it is another layer of thin clouds giving the patches with less clarity.