Otherwise rather nondescript due to a mess of intervening low clouds, this marginal supercell embedded in a cluster of storms made itself stand out from the convective crowd by flinging bright, hot bolts across the central Montana countryside. The mass of storms soon would heave a severe slab of outflow wind across the Little Snowy Range to the northeast, then right down into Lewistown. 1 SSW … [Read more...]
Turbulent Textures
Bane of tornado-centric storm hunters, outflow nonetheless can yield amazing visual and sensory experiences. The turbulent underbelly of arcus clouds--often nicknamed the "whale's mouth"--offers a fascinating visual cacophony of deeply granular cloud motions, the textures of which change continually. With a cool wind blowing at my back, and lightning-suffused core still several miles distant, … [Read more...]
Ice Beach
Icebergs of varying sizes float from the freshwater Jokulsarlon lagoon through a tidal outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, whose surf soon deposits them on the nearby black-sand beach strewn with wave-smoothed igneous cobbles. Regardless of time of day, it's a striking scene, and one unfamiliar to most of us from the lower latitudes. 7 SW Reynivellir, Iceland (18 Aug 14) Looking E 64.0396, -16.1846 … [Read more...]
Seljalandsfoss Windbow
Recipe for wondrous delight: Take one of the most captivating waterfalls in the world and add wind--specifically, a very strong, gale-force, southwest wind--and behold the vast and elegantly tempestuous spectacle of spray from a place of stable standing. We visited Seljalandsfoss thrice, each time witnessing a new facet to its personality. This certainly was the wildest. At the top, some of … [Read more...]
Cold Liquid Turquoise
Yes, we spent plenty of time viewing and photographing the famous, upstream, glacier-fed cascade Godafoss under assorted light. However, the happenings downstream were plenty fascinating as well, whether on wide-landscape scales, or as in this case, zoomed into some water action. As with the great majority of weather photographs, which feature water vapor as a gaseous fluid, no single scenes of … [Read more...]