Sound is all around us. Everybody with a working set of ears knows that. But have we ever LISTENED to all those sounds? There are places where you'd expect everything to be as quiet as a mouse. Countryside cemeteries come to mind.

Somewhere in my area, there is a tiny cemetery that is nice and quiet. Quiet? Not so much, if you care to listen. The residents are not making the sounds, even if Halloween is just around the corner.

The town of Shelburne in Nova Scotia housed a full-fledged naval base from 1941 to 1946. With the end of WWII, the base was decommissioned in 1946, but it was not done yet. After having been used as a School for Boys until 1955, the base was reactivated.

The Cold War made this a strategic point for listening to submarines. Underwater hydrophones connected to long acoustic arrays on the ocean floor listened for the characteristic sounds of submarines. The facility was closed in 1994.
The next chapter is what we are interested in, kinda.

To catch the thunder, the most important part is to protect your recording gear. Thunder comes with lightning, and lightning often comes with rain or heavy rain. The first thing that you need to protect is your microphones. In my case, I put them underneath the railing on my deck.

 Once these microphones are protected, it is time to protect the recorder.
 In my case, the recorder is a small Zoom  F3. I purchased a set of “dry bags” a while ago from Amazon, and these come in handy for exactly this type of recording.

A few days ago, I went out to record some nice, quiet forest sounds. It was raining slightly, so I set up my gear under some leaves.

Since I already had some bad experience with water in my Zoom F3 a few months ago, this time I packed it in a Ziploc bag (upside down) to keep things dry.