Numerous lightning flashes punctuated the sky in the middle to far distance on this eventful evening, most of which illuminated some cloud material or thin shafts of anvil precip between us and the main storm core. I probably shot two dozen slides of those strikes, mostly of dissatisfying quality due to either distance, or the lack of any evidence of foreground, given the utter dearth of … [Read more...]
Colorful Mare’s Tails
On this day after a deeply disputed election, chaos, uncertainty and sociopolitical tumult precipitated in the news all around. I welcomed and preferred this form of precipitation instead: long thick streamers of snow virga in the upper troposphere, falling from cirrus clouds into brilliant sunset light, forming uncinus, long known as "mare's tails". Norman OK (4 Nov 20) Looking S … [Read more...]
Yellow Rose Froze
This isn't the yellow rose of Texas, because it was frozen on the bush in an Oklahoma flower bed. The late-October 2020 ice storm brought winter weather to autumn, encasing green leaves and remaining warm-season flowers in ice, in what already was one of the strangest years in state and national history in many respects. This scene symbolizes that notion. Norman OK (27 Oct 20) Looking NNE … [Read more...]
Nearby Forked CG
Messing with my newly acquired Pentax slide camera, out an open window, as a passenger in a moving vehicle (hence the blurred foreground), I don't even recall why I was aiming this way, much less shooting. It certainly wasn't out of foreknowledge of this: an eye-blistering, eardrum-throttling lightning strike about 100 yards away, in the row of short trees extending along the background. Every … [Read more...]
Encasing Green Mimosa
An ice-encased set of green tree leaves offers a beautiful spectacle of natural artwork, painted in part by the gravity that pulled leaves down as ice deepened and icicles extended, causing them to bend into claw shapes. Leaves still on trees are bad news in an ice storm; they supply far more ice weight to a tree than when branches are bare, and as we saw with this event, bust many of them apart … [Read more...]
Towering Cumulus on the Dryline
This is a much different breed of towering cumulus than the maritime version from nine months later and over a thousand miles southeast. Here, unlike on a land-breeze circulation, the low-middle level flow was strongly sheared, causing the tilt. The cloud looks less robust than the previous example because it was drawing in dry air from west of the dryline, on which it formed. This dry … [Read more...]
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