Storm intercepts sometimes involve time spent waiting on activity to organize, whether or not it ever does. We could have called this chase a bust when the storms never could stay healthy on the Plains after leaving the background Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We could have given up, headed toward the next day's target area in eastern Colorado, and missed this. However, as if a message from … [Read more...]
Search Results for: crepuscular
Foothills Crepusculars
Brilliant crepuscular rays, carved out by foreground towering cumuli, contrasted themselves nicely against the dark shadow of a remnant anvil overhead, and background storms in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northeastern New Mexico. This sparsely inhabited area of the High Plains between the mountains and I-25 is seldom traveled by storm observers, given that a dryline sets up well east of … [Read more...]
Super (Cell) Crepusculars
Sunsets on the Plains best amaze me with a towering supercell spinning through the warming light, casting crepusculars and their intervening shadows. A "ring of Saturn" anvil rim only made the scene more stunning. Then, just a few minutes later, a vertical view at sunset offered a perspective that was similar, but also dramatically different. The storm along the Oklahoma/Kansas line would move … [Read more...]
Panhandle Anticrepuscular Rays
Anticrepuscular rays converge on the east-southeast to southeast horizon during northern-hemispheric sunsets near summer solstice. In this film slide, anvil material is seen overhead at left, spewing off a supercell behind me to the northwest. The distant pink thunderhead at lower right was over 100 miles away—a supercell which would produce a tornado after dark southeast of Wichita Falls. 5 … [Read more...]
Crepuscular Spray
We had zigzagged up the dryline from the Texas Panhandle, observing one potentially promising area of convective towers after another form, deepen, then wither from dry entertainment. This was no exception, but did occur late enough to offer this delightful spray pattern of crepuscular rays, along with a partial cloud shadow around the small anvil. Had this been the end of the chase day, we … [Read more...]
Little Contrail and Crepusculars
This short contrail sublimated rapidly behind an airplane crossing above a field of crepuscular rays, as seen from the west lawn of the National Weather Center. I used "sublimated" instead of "evaporated", because even as hot and moist as the engine exhaust was, its condensation crystallized to ice within a second or two in the surrounding bitter-cold air of double digit below zero (F). The ice … [Read more...]
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