During the "magic hour" of late-afternoon light, a small flock of snow geese and countless raindrops, near and far, imparted an oil-painting-like texture to the wondrous scene along the back side of a band of rain. These and another half million of their closest friends and relatives (geese and cranes) converge annually upon the Platte River Valley of central Nebraska—one of the world's great … [Read more...]
Blizzard at My Back
Yes, I was out in a full-fledged blizzard with gusts to 60 mph, barely able to stand, bracing with back into wind, shooting away. It wasn't balmy outside. Fortunately, I was dressed in more layers than a Vidalia onion, looking much like the Michelin Man, and didn't have to go too far to get into warm shelter. Freezing in real life and frozen in time, snowflakes that flew past at speeds of 40–60 … [Read more...]
Congestus at Sunset
About an hour and a half before this scene, a heavy-precipitation (HP) supercell passed over the semiarid southwest Texas scrubland below, dropping large hail and copious rainfall, unleashing flash floods, and leaving behind a dense puddle of cold outflow air that covered thousands of square miles. Above all that mayhem and residue billowed a fresh new development: a towering updraft that … [Read more...]
Cloud-to-Air Discharge
This is a twilight shot of a big, bright, forked, cloud-to-air lightning bolt originating in the vault of a supercell—in this case, an area just NE of the main updraft—an elevated region of rain and large hail occupying the large notch between updraft and downshear anvil. Intense charge separation happens in this part of supercells, where a large mix of precipitation particles cascades off the … [Read more...]
Twilight Tempest
An unusual July chase in an unusual spring storm season: 1993. Characterized mainly by an extensive and seemingly unrelenting series of flooding rainstorms and convective clusters across the Midwest and east-central Plains, including Kansas and Missouri, the storms of July were a last hurrah—a capstone on a year of flooding and destruction. This represented a fitting finale: a late-forming, … [Read more...]
The Sunrise Tree
Yet another glorious winter's dawn breaks over a small pond in eastern Norman, one among countless many such bodies of water that dot our state. The tall tree at left, rooted in the dam of this pond and next to another, frames this among several images shot here over the past few years, mostly after staying up for the dawn in advance of sets of overnight shifts. I'm slowly building a collection … [Read more...]
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