Some cave dripstone assemblies, such as those in Carlsbad Caverns, are mainly round in cross section, with some platy shapes; however, these were almost uniformly flattened. I'm not sure to what extent the climate above regulates their shape, since Carlsbad lies under subtropical semi-desert, whereas northwestern Thailand's Chiang Dao is natively a tropical rainforest. Regardless of those … [Read more...]
Underlain Coloring Layers
A midwinter flight from Chicago to Tokyo, closely following the Great Circle route through subarctic to Arctic lands of North America, offered the chance for some interesting high-latitude viewing before sunset. Here, sunset already was occurring beneath the later of altocumulus translucidus undulatus clouds, reddening both their own undersides and some fuzzy, semi-opaque stratus areas beneath. … [Read more...]
South Plains Tornado
A tornado with a stubby condensation cone stirred up plenty of dust during its 10–15-minutes of fame over the Texas South Plains, northwest of Lubbock. The tornado roamed about the south side of a large low-level mesocyclone, and did not move very much, except generally southward with the drift of the parent supercell. As this is a dusty area above the Caprock, the circulation dutifully raised … [Read more...]
Border-Crossing Left Mover
An expanding, heavy-precip, left-moving supercell was crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas, and didn't even bother with any green cards nor border crossings. The river and border, just a couple miles off-image to the right, was no impediment for this storm. The supercell, now pushing out a deep, tiered arcus formation, had begun to gust out with severe wind and hail, though its midlevel … [Read more...]
Broken-Funnel Tube
The second and last discrete supercell we intercepted in the Upper Delta event produced two brief, small tornadoes for us in a hazy and very moist environment, before racing across the Mississippi River and into Kentucky, on a track just north of the earlier supercell. This was the first of the second supercell's tornadoes. Note the breaks in condensation. The actual tube of tornadic wind was … [Read more...]
Sparky Downburst
An otherwise unremarkable area of thunderstorms produced fascinating sunset beauty for a few minutes over the High Plains of northwestern Kansas, just a couple miles from the Colorado border. A fat downburst plunged from the cloud base, hit ground and spread out across the prairies, with rain feet on both sides and flickers of lightning within for good measure. This wasn't a planned chase day, … [Read more...]
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