This may be the only photo I ever get of lights from a police boat, on a somewhat foggy river. The calm-looking scene in front of downtown Portland and the Morrison Bridge belies the reason for the police boat's presence: patrolling the Willamette River for any extension of a wave of protesting and sporadic destructive rioting, happening beneath and between the buildings in the distance. Some … [Read more...]
Big Volcano “Afloat”
Whether from its many great ground-based vantages, or by air as here, Mount Rainier never fails to inspire respect and amazement for its size, beauty and potential danger. In this view, from the east-northeast, the big volcano seems to float amongst or above a deck of thin fog and stratus in the boundary layer, above which the mountaintop extends. All three stratiform cloud types also are … [Read more...]
Ring of Fire
An advancing, lightning-started grass fire on the Colorado High Plains formed a nearly circular edge for a short time, as the wind stopped between two areas of flow: outflow from the far-forward flank of the supercell that caused it, and inflow into the storm. Shortly above the surface, the smoke plume gently curved from vertical to slightly right-to-left, indicating how shallow the … [Read more...]
Stacked-Plate Supercell over OU Campus
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...]
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