How to Record Thunderstorms

New York Times Magazine: How to Record Thunderstorms
“Find a quiet place and be patient. Prioritize your safety.” Illustration by Radio

I was contacted in March 2022 by The New York Times to discuss the ins and outs of recording thunderstorms for the Magazine section of their Sunday edition newspaper. Not a very technical article, mainly for beginners, that’s OK with me. It’s wonderful that a field recording article ended up in the Times.

A small portion of the article:
“You have to be patient because you can’t control thunderstorms,” says Frank Bry, 59, a sound effects recordist who creates libraries of sounds that he sells to video-game, television, movie and white-noise production companies. Bry has four collections of thunderstorm recordings collected over 30 years from his home in rural northern Idaho. Know that the landscape around you will shape how thunder sounds. Bry lives near a large lake surrounded by mountain ranges, resulting in a volume and resonance he calls “bodacious.” Still, he covets the way thunder peals over the deserts of New Mexico. “I’ve heard pretty phenomenal thunder recordings from there,” Bry says. “The sound is crisp and dry.”