An evening desert storm, riding the last ribbons of a shrinking band of monsoonal easterlies, flings forked jabs of deadly electricity over the skies of extreme southeastern Nevada. I had been hoping for more action in central and southern Arizona—the prototypical monsoon-storm hotbed. Instead, an expanding swath of low/middle-level westerlies cut off substantial thunderstorm production a day … [Read more...]
Desert Reflectives
On this two-week trip I went on several exhaustingly high and/or long hikes far from roads, yet one of my favorite scenes arose utterly unplanned and unanticipated, within a stone's throw of a highway, and a short stroll down a dirt path. The lesson: be open to wonderment and marvelous experiences, regardless of "ease" of access. Surprisingly, nobody else was out shooting or admiring this … [Read more...]
Total Solar Eclipse 2017
At age six, looking at a map of future solar totalities in the World Book Encyclopedia, I had the High Plains part of the path in the crosshairs. Elke and I each have been waiting our whole lives for this, decades since childhood, so it's fitting that we did it together. After a lifetime, we finally witnessed one of the most intensely spiritual and moving natural phenomena to be found. Thank … [Read more...]
Eyjafjallajökull: Landscape, Waterscape, Icescape
Eyjafjallajökull—nearly unpronounceable but palpably dangerous—offered stark and wondrous beauty just four years after its infamous eruption, peacefully capped in glaciers and draining waterfalls across its rolling green skirt, as if no such geologic tantrum had been thrown. Still, one can see evidence of the pyroclastic paroxysm in the ash-strewn "dirty" appearance of the fractured glacial ice … [Read more...]
Big Spray
Scampering up a steep, slick trail, then over to a notch in the high cliffs, yielded a view of the beautiful, majestic Skógafoss that seldom appears in tourist shots: framed by plants and moss-covered crags. One of Iceland's largest waterfalls at roughly 200 (tall) by 50 feet (wide), this pounding pile of water is notorious for the tremendous volume of spray it yields. This day was no … [Read more...]
Wellington Wanderer
Despite bouts of furious rotation, the mesocyclone of the spectacular Wellington supercell only could condense brief funnels and a couple of small but unmistakable tornadoes during its journey across the eastern Panhandle. This little but lively tornado, seen here from several miles away with aid of a 400-mm zoom lens, buzzed around the broader circulation as part of a merry-go-round of otherwise … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 247
- 248
- 249
- 250
- 251
- …
- 380
- Next Page »