On a cool, breezy central Texas night above the Lord’s lit cross, a elevated updraft gift-wrapped itself in electrical ribbons for one brilliant second. The trailing cloud shield of a now-distant thunderstorm complex still spat occasional rain, making me miss a couple more of these while wiping the lens. This one, however, was not to be missed, by eye or by camera sensor. Llano TX (5 May 23) … [Read more...]
Cole Tornado and Supercell Structure
Often opaquely to densely rain-wrapped, this brief thinning of precipitation orbiting the tornado defined it nicely for visual identification during a relatively early, thick stage. Surrounding storm structure, as you can see, was amazing. Unfortunately, this tornado killed two people near Cole, despite being both in a tornado watch, and well-warned. The visual form of this stout tornado, … [Read more...]
Electrified “Mush”
Not long before, this was a brief supercell with promising structure (what's left of the updraft is on the left edge), but undercutting outflow elevated, then doomed, the storm. Spotters and chasers often call convective activity that loses its visual definition "mush", and this was becoming that. I kept the camera trained down the road, however, because delicately beautiful lightning filaments … [Read more...]
Stout Late Twilight Tornado
This fairly stout tornado barely was visible as it churned northward across the flat farmland southwest through northwest of Frederick. I had seen this supercell's first tornado, a brief cone also to the west of US-183, while driving; it had disappeared as soon as I found a safe place to pull over. Determined not to let this better-organized vortex escape the camera, but unsurprisingly bedeviled … [Read more...]
Virga Sunrise
Midlevel showers dropped variably thin, translucent to opaque streamers of rain aloft, cast aglow by warm rays of late dawn. A scientifically explainable process gloriously colored and texturized the sunrise sky, similarly to a somewhat rainier, higher-based, more orange sunrise from a few years earlier in the Badlands. This sunrise from our driveway hugely pleased two longtime lovers sharing … [Read more...]
Last Acadian Sunrise
Well, it's not the last ever in the Acadia region, but this was the final sunrise or sunset for us, of several wonderful ones on our Maine trip. We shortly would bid goodbye to the land of "lobstah", bound to end the day at a hotel near Boston to fly out the next morning. Cirrus fibratus and thin cirrostratus strands both caught and shadowed the hidden sun's warming rays, to the tune of a finely … [Read more...]
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