An early-morning thunderstorms complex retreated to the southeast and east, leaving behind a fresh pool of outflow, crowned with fractocumulus scud in cool northeasterlies. Emerging sunshine illuminated the scud against the dark pall of nimbostratus and elevated stratocumulus closer to the storms' rear. This process rendered one of my favorite lighting arrangements in the sky: bright clouds … [Read more...]
Closer Tornado, Harder View
Sometimes, tornadoes become more difficult to see with decreasing distance. The dusty "Kimball tornado" approached, and I began to hear its whistling swirl through the field about a mile away (lower center). All the while, it also became more diffusely defined near the edge. That's rather important when judging one's own safe distance! Right after this, I backed off southward a couple miles … [Read more...]
Organizing Supercell with Wall Cloud
Early in this supercell's life cycle, on a day when a lot of parameters favored tornado potential and promise was high for storm observers to witness something special, it rapidly organized a large updraft base and large, low, slowly rotating wall cloud seen here. Alas, this was as much as the storm would show for a few cycles until it got well northeast and turned into a nicely structured but … [Read more...]
CG from Chaotic Sky
A supercell that formed in Montana—just north of an outflow-reinforced warm front—continued to cloak itself behind a deck of warm-advection clouds, including intermittent areas of asperatus, spitting occasional CG lightning, while churning southeastward across the northeastern corner of Wyoming. Take out the northern Plains landscape, and swap in one with more, taller trees, and this could be a … [Read more...]
Stratocumulus under Cirrus, Dallas
Two days before a historic solar eclipse, the late-afternoon "Golden Hour" painted its reflective presence across the ever-majestic Dallas skyline, beneath a deeply layered sky of scattered low stratocumulus clouds and a broken deck of high cirrus, with a couple contrails streaked through for good measure. Almost 16 years earlier, I was right under the nearest notch of the tallest building, … [Read more...]
Bradshaw Wide View with Structure
As the Bradshaw tornado pulled away northward, the last in a chain of closely spaced, tornadic, dryline supercells came into fuller view, with its classical rear-flank convective and gust-frontal structure. The scene at this stage looked strikingly like one from a NSSL slide of the Alfalfa, OK tornado on 22 May 1981, which I long had admired for its combination of tornado and textbook context. … [Read more...]
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