Some of the most evocative skyscapes on the Great Plains happen behind storms. This strange light came about in the form of two storm complexes—one following closely behind the other. The slate blue-gray veil in the distance was a large shield of rain and clouds from the first storms, which started as a training series of supercells that formed on and near a lee trough and the Raton Mesa, well … [Read more...]
Butte-Scraping Wall Cloud
Fascinating and complex processes unfolded in this scene, as a supercell's slowly rotating wall cloud passed over and beyond the butte just to the left of middle. The very low, perhaps "ground-scraping" right (eastern) part of the wall cloud, located just beyond the ridge, temporarily tightened its rotation a lot. However, it was too difficult to determine with certainty if a tornado spun up in … [Read more...]
Elevated Supercell Trying Hard
After forming over Raton Mesa in southern Colorado, and over 3 hours churning north-northeastward, a supercell with intense midlevel mesocyclone still was alive and forging over an increasingly deep pool of outflow air, with a deck of stratified low clouds overhead and surface temperatures in the upper 50s. The near-side cloud feature was an arcus cloud riding outflow from the rain-filled … [Read more...]
Milk River Rampage
A heavy-precipitation (HP) supercell just had been overtaken by the southern portion of a squall line, but retained its strong midlevel rotation, keeping it a line-embedded supercell fronted by an accelerating wall of wind and hail. The resulting storm rampaged southeastward down the Milk River Valley of northern Montana at highway speeds of 60 mph or more. Though even a brief stop would allow … [Read more...]
Dusty Supercell with “Ring of Saturn”
Beauty, or ugliness, is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to cloud forms. In this case, I'd call it both, rendering a weird and somewhat otherworldly sky unlike any I've seen in a very long time. The supercell started out high-based, its outflow strong enough to loft countless thousands of tons of openly exposed, west Texas topsoil, its inflow slowly growing intense enough to … [Read more...]
Icy Variety
This was a wondrous assortment of freshly fallen hail in one place, the only addition being the knobby, nearly 2-inch-diameter piece from merely a couple feet to the right of the view. Sizes ranged from less than pea sized to hailstones about half an inch larger than the measured specimen, based on a few others I noticed later. It's fascinating to contemplate the multitude of processes, … [Read more...]
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