A mass of deep towering cumulus clouds, so large as to make the desert mountains of far west Texas whose lift spawned it look puny, here began its transition to a short-lived supercell thunderstorm. The tallest convective battlement at left, a tilted wall of congestus, shot upward through a layer of pileus that formed just above it, seconds before. Vertical motions in this cloud cluster were visually quite intense, with the entire formation having erupted from small cumuli only a few minutes before. Probably because of its remoteness and lack of more roads, the Davis Mountains/Big Bend region is an under-heralded area to observe storms, but not for those of us who knew the late, great meteorologist and storm observer Al Moller, who often waxed poetic in his seminars about the grandeur of the area’s rugged land and wide sky.
7 NE Marathon TX (22 May 15) Looking NW
30.2824, -103.1615