Cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-air lightning in the anvil region, close to a supercell's updraft, can be fast and furious. This unique breed of lightning, which is almost continuous much of the time, is observed almost exclusively with supercells. Lacking a formal name, the chaser slang "anvil zit" caught on in the 1980s as the most common term for this subspecies of lightning. This is not my … [Read more...]
Discharge Directional Differences
A single lightning discharge produced a fairly normal-looking cloud-to-ground flash, in the back side of a thunderstorm complex, and simultaneously, horizontal filaments flung many miles through light, trailing precipitation, just under the anvil. The reddish effect here is real, unlike with a lot of old film shooting. The lightning was distant, brought into closer view by zooming and cropping. … [Read more...]
Forward-Flank Stable Layers
Several interesting effects happened here to create this peculiar sight. First, it was late in the afternoon, with the sun obliquely to the left; so warm colors got refracted through a large amount of cloud material and precipitation. The storm responsible was a classic supercell that had scorched numerous spots along the ground, and in its path, with hot bolts of lightning from its anvil. … [Read more...]
Forked CGs
Simple but beautiful, forked CG (cloud-to-ground) strokes hit one behind the other. If your camera has a "B" (bulb) setting, taking lightning pictures is as easy as putting the camera firmly on a tripod (make sure it is level!), aiming it at the part of the storm where lightning is most common, and holding down the trigger with a finger or release cable until the flash occurs. Lightning takes … [Read more...]
Wintertime Wall Cloud
An elongated wall cloud rotated slowly but rather asymmetrically, seemingly trading areas of more-concentrated turning for a few minutes until the entire mesocyclone area began to be undercut by the storm's forward-flank outflow (coming in from the right). In the meantime, scud in the tail cloud at right moved fairly rapidly inward (right to left). On a cool yet unstable day when low-topped, … [Read more...]
Forks of Fury
Although this weakening, formerly tornadic storm no longer posed a tornado threat, it still produced sporadic lightning flashes, including a few tall, forked blasts from the middle to upper levels. Even though we were farther away than it appears here, thanks to the handiness of zoom lenses, a deep, protracted report of thunder reverberated across the northwest Texas landscape with each such … [Read more...]
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