Before turning into a brilliantly glowing burner of multiple acres in strengthening storm-inflow winds, this fire was a slowly shifting ring of flaming grass, spreading out from its inches-wide source. Of course, when that "source" was a channel of lightning launched miles aloft, into the anvil of the storm, it only would be a surprise not to have a fire start. After seeing the channel … [Read more...]
Twilight’s Ominous Beauty
Riveting and spectacular, outflow-dominant yet still supercellular, electrically hazardous but oddly calming, this twilight storm gathered sunset colors reflected from clouds to the south and interwove them artfully with cooler tones from the deeper shadows, all wrapped in a striated skirt of platy, laminar bands of air forced to lift above the shelf. This continually rumbling beauty advanced … [Read more...]
High Plains High Voltage
Funny it is, how often we frequent storm observers end up in some of the same places as before, hundreds of miles from home. Two years and four days prior, I photographed a sunset at the same pullout. This time, it made a great vantage for a few minutes of attempts to shoot bright, daytime lightning from a former supercell that was evolving into a small bow. Unlike an even older, more-distant … [Read more...]
Sucking Dust on the Great Plains
Stunning in form on its own, this supercell north of Kit Carson sported a vast field of mammatus across the underside of the downshear anvil, near to far. Meanwhile, a wall cloud under the right base, and arcus cloud under the left, could be seen clearly, despite all the intervening blowing dust. Displacement of dust, sand and soil by wind is called an eolian process in geology. This counts! … [Read more...]
Plated Sky
An expansive, late-stage supercell strutted insistently across the Great Plains’ vast stage with one final, gaudy show, before getting absorbed in a broader band of thunderstorms. Dust rising into the wall cloud at lower middle showed the storm still had a surface-based updraft, though the cloud plates represented stable layers through which the storm’s rotating chimney of low pressure also was … [Read more...]
Colorado Prairie Fire
Ignited by an exceptionally potent lightning strike under a supercell's anvil, this Great Plains grass fire spread out in a ring at first, then got steered westward by strengthening inflow to the storm that caused it. Sparse, light rain falling from the anvil wasn't enough to stop this conflagration, and fire trucks already were on the way from the nearest towns about 20 miles away. I exited the … [Read more...]
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