As often happens, this multicell thunderstorm began shooting lightning strokes every which way, out of the region where two cells interacted. One cell, just off the photo at left, was a prolific sparker in its own right; and the other created the big precipitation core in the middle to right background. New towers erupted over the boundary between the outflow of the two cells—the roll cloud at … [Read more...]
Memphis Rainbow
Rainbows right before sunset have the most vertical alignment possible from a ground-level view, but still are mildly tilted because of the sun's not being directly along or below the horizontal plane. [Contrast this with a mid-afternoon rainbow that is so tilted as to barely extend above the horizon.] The reddening of sunlight at this time of day, passing through nearly the longest possible … [Read more...]
Anvil “Zit”
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...]
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