While driving up the Pali on Chain of Craters Road, after hiking around the coastal petroglyphs, a magical patch of the post-sunset sky popped into my peripheral vision, as if a thumbnail previewing a broadcast from a dreamscape. Beauty like this compels stopping and appreciation...and shooting! So many of my favorite skies are unplanned and opportunistic like that. From about a thousand feet … [Read more...]
Mammatus over Oklahoma Hills
Under the very western edge of a large thunderstorm complex we had tangled with from different angles, a strip of mammatus finally came into view in the last possible sunset light. The understated, even slightly spooky scene unfolded for just a minute before puddle-strewn valley fields, then all the color vanished into the deepening night. 2 WSW Cabaniss OK (19 May 25) Looking NW 34.93 … [Read more...]
Big Turquoise Swirl
[Click Image to Enlarge] In panoramic shots, storms are closer than they appear, and this one was churning right down the highway toward me with the upper middle parts nearly overhead. This rather fast southeastward-moving storm, consistent with its deep turquoise innards, was dropping copious amounts of severe hail, and occasionally showing enough low-level rotation to make an observer … [Read more...]
Wet Sun Breakout
After a chase involving a few wet, messy, low-contrast mesocyclones in difficult terrain (unfortunately, fairly common in eastern Oklahoma), we let the storms go once they started to line out and move into even worse terrain with bigger trees. The chase actually ended early enough for a buffet dinner in the trailing rain shield, and a start to the drive home before sunset. One stop along the way … [Read more...]
High-Plains Homestead with High-Based Storm
[Click Image to Enlarge] A former marginal supercell threw its greatest beauty into the sky as it moved into a less-favorable air mass and weakened, spawning a double rainbow beyond an abandoned and mostly collapse High Plains homestead. A panoramic sweep was needed to show the fullest possible view of this storm, though it cannot portray the cool outflow wind nor the fresh, earthy aroma of … [Read more...]
Big, Messy Mesocyclone
A low, ragged, broadly, moderately rotating, southeast-moving supercell base pulls tail clouds from the north (forward-flank) and south (inflow) sides, occasionally yielding a briefly tighter area of rotation that made us pay close watch beneath for debris spinups that never were seen. When the front part accelerated north, we thought tornadogenesis could be imminent, but within less than a … [Read more...]