A broken line of storms with embedded supercells marched steadily southeastward across the Texas Panhandle, offering a visual treat. Fascinating layered tiers stacked themselves atop the collective outflow pool. Under a less-dense part of the precipitation shield, the cloud base glowed with a teasing swipe of sunset colors. Above the main arcus, an extension of the lower-midlevel banded-shelf … [Read more...]
Mirages on a Cold Western Road
A series of narrow white highway mirages cross a marvelously desolate country two-lane near the California-Nevada state line, on my last trip with a slide-film camera. Just two days earlier, a small but potent snowstorm had blanketed the White Mountains (ahead in the view), the Sierra Nevada behind me, and the Long Valley Caldera between, with a good coating of fresh powder. Apparently, this … [Read more...]
Downside Up
Only the mirrored view is photographed here, where the sun is diffused somewhat by intervening fog, then reflected (along with the arboreal silhouettes) off the surface of a limpid pond. Scanning the whole of a scene offers not only the over-arching, full perspective, but opportunities to focus one's concentration (or composition, if engaging the art of photography) into particularly captivating … [Read more...]
Wild Night Sky
A dense band of severe thunderstorms with embedded supercells plowed southeastward at over 50 mph and forced both stable and unstable layers of air to rise, creating this magnificently lightning-tinted rampart of cloud decks beneath a mammatus-dappled anvil teeming with electrical crawlers. 10 NW Sayre OK (16 May 16) Looking NNW 35.4079, -99.7308 … [Read more...]
Connerville Tornado’s Ragged Updraft
What a fascinating, surprising event this was! Above is a near-normal view of the same tornado presented earlier in zoomed perspective. Even though the updraft was rotating, it would seem a stretch to call the feature a supercell, since its radar presentation was hardly recognizable, and since the parent cloudform was so disorganized and shredded in appearance. The cloud base is uneven and … [Read more...]
Funnels Aplenty
After several minutes of cruising slowly across the central Nebraska prairies, with little damage except to fences and ant hills, the Sargent tornado began to narrow. Its condensation funnel "roped out" slowly while still contacting the surface, as the cloud base outpaced the ground circulation. This process is very common for tornadoes. The sudden development of another funnel nearby (and … [Read more...]
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