While at work on a supernumerary (for me, research) shift, and right after a seminar on (guess what) supercells, one developed northwest of Oklahoma City, then turned hard right (southeast) and dumped copious amounts of severe and often damaging hail. Knowing the hodograph character and ambient flow, I figured this would be the easiest of chases; the storm would be a well-matured, photogenic, … [Read more...]
Dallas Stratus
This stratus deck, with bottom around 800 feet above ground level based on the known heights of the cloud-penetrating Bank of America Plaza (near) and Comerica skyscraper (far), seems harmless and innocuous, except perhaps to VFR (visual flight rules) aviators. Yet it was the source of great angst, for in just a few hours, a total solar eclipse would sweep over the city, potentially fulfilling a … [Read more...]
Dryland Sundown
A little over an hour after an ethereal show of crepuscular rays a couple miles to the west, the remaining cloud debris and rain from dying storms moving off the Sangre de Cristo Mountains gave us a pleasant High Plains sunset. This part of the Great Plains often finds itself behind the dryline, with spring precipitation mainly confined to early synoptic lows digging south of the area and forcing … [Read more...]
Arcus over More Badlands Grasslands
As a tiered shelf cloud roared into the Badlands, not far from a dilapidated ghost town called Scenic, its northern portion made quite the scenic scene beyond the verdant fields atop the High Plains landscape. About a hundred yards away, hobbling quickly on a pulled calf muscle from a slip in the mud in Chadron two days before, I positioned for the radically different, yet equally cherished, … [Read more...]
Night Supercell Blowout
The last vestiges of a city-lit nighttime supercell's tiered, stacked structure translated across the near northeastern sky, as its outflow rushed out to choke off remaining inflow. Within 10 minutes, the rear-flank gust front had roared past, rendering refreshingly cool northerly winds, while the storm lost what little lightning it still had been producing in the main core, then soon enough, … [Read more...]
Dusty Forward-Flank Tornado
This was the first, best-organized and perhaps longest-lived, of several tornadoes that developed along the forward-flank/inflow interface of a weird, midday, occluded-front-riding supercell, nearly collocated with a synoptic low, in northwestern Kansas. It raised a tremendous amount of field dust for at least 10 minutes before being hidden behind that oncoming wall of rain to the left. The rain … [Read more...]
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