One of the advantages of night shifts in the office park is seeing quiet sunrises from high atop, when time permits a quick break to zip on up. Fortunately that was the case here, as two rooftop observers were blessed with this sight: a streaky plume of convective cirrus, producing a small mammatus belt and trailing virga across the northeastern sky, spotlit by a slit of sunlight evading cloud … [Read more...]
Circumhorizon Arc
We had arrived in the general target area of marginal afternoon storm potential, and decided to explore parts of the ironically named and almost wholly anthropogenic Nebraska National Forest. Right after leaving, while cruising toward Thedford and a future day's rendezvous with supercells, an odd color effect that I couldn't quite peg appeared among thin cirrus and cirrocumulus in the southern, … [Read more...]
Petrified Forest Landscape
The Petrified Forest sits in the badlands of a dry, high desert, but its presence has everything to do with the action of water. Around 225 million years ago, in the late Triassic, mighty floods washed logs into low swales, burying them in sediment that later hardened to rock—the Chinle formation. Over time, wood cells filled with silica that had been dissolved in hot, mineralized water, … [Read more...]
Lava Lake Glow on Low Clouds
As the evening deepened and stratus clouds lowered over Kilauea caldera's highly active Halemaumau Crater, the lava lake rose, at times splashing distant gobs of fountain lava above the plane of the visible rim. That was an uncommon sight, and one we were fortunate to witness. The distinctive orange glow of the lava shone brightly here, both in the stratus and in the flammagenitus cloud plume of … [Read more...]
Between a Mesocyclone and a Tornado
The rising dust under this ragged but rapidly rotating wall cloud also was moving around in a closed circulation—just not as visually intensely as the clouds above. If I had to guess, it was near the margins of the lower EF0 wind threshold of 65-mph three-second gusts, but of course this storm did not have a mobile radar or in situ anemometer involved, to establish better confidence. The vortex … [Read more...]
More Truck-Stop Thunder
A needed respite from the road turned into a marvelous electrical show in the sky outside a northern Oklahoma truck stop. Several magnificent discharges split the rainy sky before the responsible elevated storm raced off to the east-northeast and weakened. Looking at this alone, one wouldn't guess that feet behind me sat a row of diesel-exhaust-belching 18-wheelers idling and rumbling away. … [Read more...]
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