A field of mammatus spread overhead, beneath the anvil of an approaching, southeastward-moving supercell. The mammatus display soon would be supplemented by another supercell forming behind the first, in nice near-sunset light. The historic church is Saint Mary's, a beautiful and well-maintained little Catholic church out in a completely rural area. 8 NW Offerle KS (20 Jun 20) Looking … [Read more...]
Dusty Illinois Tornado
The first of four tornadoes we would see this memorable central Illinois outbreak day (but only shoot passable film slides of two), the Winchester event spun up a little too close for comfort after we let the expanding mesocyclone approach. The tornado developed (not "touched down"...tornadoes actually spin up!) in the field at left, as a narrow, horizontal dust jet helically whirled into the … [Read more...]
Pretornadic Winchester Wall Cloud
We headed east out of Kansas City on the first of two days off to sample a well-advertised, synoptically evident outbreak with "High Risk" outlook. That became a "Particularly Dangerous Situation" tornado watch for this area by the time we had arrived. With storms forecast to be fast-moving (and verifying that way!), we positioned well ahead of a surging, arc-shaped dryline, on the Illinois side … [Read more...]
Crawling out of the Rain
Numerous filaments of the same lightning discharge forked off a common mother leader and out of a rain core near cloud base. The pastel ambient light of the sunset hour and the reddish hue imparted by the discharge itself left a wondrous scene on the sensor of my camera, electrons of the atmospheric past, influencing electrons the screen now transfers to your retina. This storm didn't produce a … [Read more...]
Double Pileus Crowning Congestus
Even though the supercell (unseen, right rear) was becoming elevated and dying, flanking congestus towers for the storm still shot into the sky with vigor and crisp definition. I was fumbling around with something else when one of my storm intercept partners for the day (can't remember if it was Rich or Bryan) hollered across the road at me to shoot the pileus. Fortunately, I managed to slap on … [Read more...]
Great Plains Towering Cumulus
Deep convection was underway just east of the dryline, on windmill-festooned Great Plains of northern Kansas, soon to evolve into a late-developing supercell. The towers' northeastward lean indicates the vertical wind shear that later would compel them to rotate. 2 N Webster KS (4 May 7) Looking E 39.4233, -99.4266 … [Read more...]
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