I had spent half an hour taking nondescript, distant CG (cloud-to-ground) lightning pictures in the Osage Hills. The location was almost surrounded by thunderstorms, whose anvils had aggregated together and become increasingly charged. Then, a sudden explosion of cloud-to-air and cloud-to-cloud filaments filled the sky--including directly overhead! This photo thru a 50-mm lens shows only a … [Read more...]
Flash with Fireball
After the Red Halo shot, we reeled off a few more CG-over-landscape photos with the encroaching, increasingly outflow-dominant supercell. The electrical action and cores started getting nearer also—too close after this CG blew up something flammable on the next hillside to our SW. For an instant, an orange fireball ignited, and its glow is captured here along with the lightning strike. … [Read more...]
Wyoming Storm Ending
After a great day of Devils Tower photography, storm observing and good food, we headed out of Newcastle in search of a wonderful Wyoming sunset. It found us here. An isolated, elevated thunderstorm formed to our SW behind the earlier complex and moved eastward, intercepting the lowering rays of sunlight as it dissipated. A faint secondary rainbow formed to the right of the main one, and a nice … [Read more...]
Yellowstone Mudpot Freeze-Frame
The Fountain Paint Pots at Yellowstone, along with the Hverir mudpots in Iceland, are two of the most consistently outstanding formations of their kind in the world. Magma a short distance underground heats water to beyond the boiling point, but it stays liquid due to pressure. In both cases, nearby geysers vent much of that water through outburst fountains, but some of the water travels through … [Read more...]
Hole Puncher
Even on the periphery of a tornado, or in one of its weaker phases, flying debris remains a major danger. A night tornado on 26 April 1991 launched a chunk of unknown debris ("missile" in damage-survey parlance) through the brick veneer of the Oologah (OK) High School gym. Gymnasiums are inherently unsafe in a tornado anyway because of weak support for large-span roofs; but this illustrates an … [Read more...]
Yellowstone Morning Fogs
On a cold Yellowstone dawn, two fog sources blended to form an enchantingly eerie and ethereal scene: ground fog from the previous day's heavy rains and condensed steam risen out of geothermal vents. For about an hour, an area of several square miles around the park's western geyser basins resembled a giant version of the stages and fun houses that use dry ice to create chaotically dancing and … [Read more...]
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