Last chance to shoot a dying supercell before I get into the city! Having rolled back northwest from a long-lived storm east of Tahoka, I was tired and longing for lodging, when many flickers appeared back in the direction I was headed anyway. I took the chance to stop and hope for a few more flashes from a storm that seemed to get less active as I approached. The stop also would delay my … [Read more...]
Texas Sky
The North Texas sky in May never fails to include the supercell: an organized, rotating, twisted, tilted column of moist air many miles high, processing millions of tons of air per minute at upward speeds nearing 100 mph, and a prolific producer of severe hail, damaging wind, and sometimes even tornadoes. The flags’ direction and uprightness gives a hint as to why the storm is there, and why … [Read more...]
Whale’s Mouth Tornado
We had finished watching a "landspout" fest from a line of thunderstorms that was becoming outflow dominant, and drove east a few miles through light to moderate rain to catch back up to the gust front, when my passenger yelled about a tornado to our south. Sure enough, as I pulled to a stop, a faint column of rotating spray and dust was visible out his window, under the tip of a condensation … [Read more...]
Cornhusker State Orphan Anvil
"The good life" somehow evaded this dying gasp of deep convection just north of the Kansas/Nebraska border, as seen from right on the state line. Storm observers often refer to these cloud formations, whereby a small anvil and fuzzy, rainy remnant of a low- to middle-level updraft are all that remains, as "little orphan anvils." The linked image is a literal textbook archetype that I shot on … [Read more...]
Rotating Fury
On its 175-mile trail of damage from just southeast of Amarillo to the Haskell-Munday corridor, this fearsome, fast-moving, but beautiful supercell underwent several marvelous metamorphoses. Here, it presents a layered mothership structure with stunning turquoise chambers between, while racing southeastward at 50 mph between Childress and Paducah. This storm wasn't something to take lightly. It … [Read more...]
Blue-Hour Wall Cloud and Funnel
Late-day supercells that form on "cooked" old outflow boundaries can do interesting things in twilight or after dark, including (sometimes) tornadoes. I targeted the boundary between Aspermont and Dickens partly for that reason, and partly because it was the easiest to reach. This was as close as it came to paying off while there was still daylight, about 15 minutes after sunset in the "blue … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- …
- 416
- Next Page »