This colorful high cloud chunk, detached from the south side of an extensive anvil shield to the NW, exuded marvelous iridescence for just a few minutes. Young, thin clouds with small variations in drop size sometimes produce this effect through diffraction—usually near the sun, as in this instance. Through its short lifespan, the formation blazed yellow-orange, orange-red (right before I … [Read more...]
Sunset over Downtown KC
From deep in the archive of film slides comes this jewel that I finally scanned in 2011, nearly 18 years after clicking the shutter. The downtown skyline of Kansas City, as seen from the 17th floor of the Federal building, framed another splendid sunset. Thunderstorms from late afternoon had weakened and moved east, leaving behind a plethora of middle- and high-level clouds, some of them … [Read more...]
Unsanitary Abstraction
From the image alone, try to guess what is being shown, without reading past this sentence. The setting is a flood near record levels on Lake Thunderbird, east of Norman—thus, the reddish hue of the water in shadows. The green wall is that of a dumpster floating in the lake, catching beams of late-afternoon sunlight between trees located behind me. All manner of loose trash and debris washed … [Read more...]
Striped Mammatus
As a complex of severe thunderstorms receded south-southeastward across the appropriately named Thunder Basin National Grassland, surfing its own outflow while spewing severe hail and wind, it left behind an extensive field of mammatus. This formation, however, represented an elongated and striking form that occasionally resembled closely swimming dolphins or can-packed sardines. 28 WSW … [Read more...]
Quintessential Great Plains
What can be more evocative of the Great Plains ideal than rolling shortgrass prairie, a windmill, and of course, a funnel cloud? Fortunately for a few locusts and jackrabbits in the projected path, the circulation producing the persistent but only modestly spinning funnel never intensified into a tornado, as far as we could tell. 8 SE Bridgeport NE (15 May 15) Looking WSW 41.587, -102.984 … [Read more...]
Iced Pecans
Still held fast to their formative limbs, pecans dangle encased in ice after a bout of freezing rain. Normally 15–20 feet or more above ground, the branches sagged severely from the weight of the ice, bringing them down at or below eye level. In this case, they didn't snap, and within a few days after the ice melted, resumed essentially their former positions. Thousands of other limbs and even … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 334
- 335
- 336
- 337
- 338
- …
- 385
- Next Page »