Just a few miles northeast of the southernmost point in all U.S. states, the "green sand" beach of Papakolea is one of only four in the world. Its cliffs of loosely cemented, tuffaceous sandstone were layered by multiple events of Mauna Loa rift eruptions, and wind and water deposits of pyroclastic sediment over the last 10,000 years. Crystals of olivine, the mineral causing the greenish tint … [Read more...]
Ragged Tornado and Accessory Vortex
Before slowly elongating into its "white snake" stage, the Prospect Valley tornado exhibited some behavior that was uncommon in my experience for a tornado not rotating particularly fast above the surface. For once, the fuzzy, ragged cloud material along the near left "edge" of the visible funnel were forming in place and rising nearly vertically, connecting with the main condensation tube. This … [Read more...]
Morning in the Keys
A placid, sporadically showery morning in the lower Keys was decorated by towering cumulus clouds and a faint rainbow segment, the sky textured by a deck of smoke whose origin I never learned, at the top of the boundary layer —all of it mirrored marvelously in the rippled tidewaters of Pine Channel. The gentle wave action reflected the highest convective cloud tops in such as way that they … [Read more...]
Silhouetted Stratus over a Butte
Barely clearing a southwest Texas butte "one dark and windy day", this narrow ribbon of stratus behind a thunderstorm complex was silhouetted and partially underlit by a low sun. A dark altostratus deck loomed above, "up a cloudy draw." As I beheld this scene, that old Johnny Cash tune spontaneously came back to life in my mind, right in the moment and on the spot. Eerily similar to how … [Read more...]
Super Supercell Sunset
This had been a difficult storm intercept day: watching a couple of promising looking supercells die, dodging an extremely intense bow echo, and getting caught in a separate, nasty core of heavy rain, hail and damaging wind that made us feel as if we were stuck in front of a giant fire hose. We let the "fire hose" pass over both us and the nearby town of Mineral Wells, then on a whim and a … [Read more...]
Turquoise Fort Portals
The same Caribbean-blue waters that offer such a beautiful tonal contrast through Fort Jefferson's embrasures also will contribute to its ultimate, if gradual, crumble to ruin, without major measures of maintenance. Hurricanes and other storms fueled by the high oceanic heat content of the nearby Gulf and Caribbean will wear the structure down through wind, waves, salt spray, and the effective … [Read more...]
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