A triple tail cloud is not to be confused with the saltwater "tripletail" fish. Though those are fun on the hook, and hard fighters for their size, I prefer this kind of "catch". For as many supercells as I've witnessed, this much discrete tail-cloud banding has been extraordinarily rare—and combined with such great length, it was unique. The remarkable storm formed in southeastern Colorado, … [Read more...]
Bitter Cold Sunrise at Battlestar Norman
One of the coldest mornings in decades dawned with solidly subzero temperatures, snow cover, and anthropomorphic, convective "steam" clouds rising from unseen HVAC vents into the light of the rising sun. Because of a pandemic and the time of day, very few people were working in-office anyway, save for a handful of forecasters and security personnel stationed at the National Weather Center (a.k.a. … [Read more...]
Twilight Supercell and Big Midlevel Funnel
A sky kaleidoscope flashed forth, when a bit of lightning erupted in the upper-level updraft-to-anvil transition area of a supercell. The low-precipitation supercell had offered a splendid sunset scene, and now spun up likely the largest (relative to storm size) midlevel funnel cloud I have seen. Meanwhile, a "ring of Saturn" cloud band skirted the midlevel updraft, nicely collaring the … [Read more...]
Brief Nighttime Cone
The cone-shaped condensation funnel at right lasted a few minutes, but only briefly kicked up enough dust and debris to call it tornadic with certainty. Fortunately, scattered light from the cloud-to-ground flash at left produced just enough silhouetting to bring it out in this photo. This tornado was the first from a newer mesocyclone east of US-183, and separate from an older, formerly … [Read more...]
Power Flash outside Tornado
[Part 2 of 2] Before wrapping too deeply in rain to see anymore, the Saddle Mountain tornado became fuzzier visually as it crested the western end of the Slick Hills, engulfing a wind turbine that had been braked already. It didn't appear to damage the turbine, and some of its condensation faintly can be seen on the near side of the hill, behind the lit structure. Fortuitously, I caught a … [Read more...]
Saddle Mountain Tornado
[Part 1 of 2] This low, wet, messy, tornadic circulation first developed just beyond that wind-turbine-festooned ridge it was cresting, which is the western end of southwestern Oklahoma's Slick Hills, and near a dot on the map called Saddle Mountain, named after part of the Wichita Mountains still further away. With the supercell already taking on heavy-precipitation characteristics, a big … [Read more...]
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