The opening Sunrise Tree scene for the cool season of 2021–22 arrived with leaves afloat on the pond, some still in the trees. The woods silhouetted a sunrise cloudscape textured with subtlety and not sharpness, where a large, fuzzy swath of variably thin cirrus caught first light and luxuriantly dappled the sky. It was a moment evoking gratitude for its very presence, and for life as a whole, … [Read more...]
Frontal Arcus, Part 2
[Part 2 of 2] As the frontal arcus approached, of course it dominated more of the sky, flushing birds from their morning lair. Wind shift from southwesterly to northwesterly would arrive within less than a minute. The fundamental processes making this arcus are the same as a thunderstorm gust front, but for the source of the cold air: a synoptic cyclone instead of mesoscale to local-scale … [Read more...]
Frontal Arcus, Part 1
[Part 1 of 2] On a humid late-autumn morning, a seemingly ordinary cold front made quite the spectacle of itself! This was one of the most impressive non-thunderstorm shelf clouds I’ve seen: front-lit by a southeastern sun, set beneath wispy cirrus, and above a rolling landscape of semi-rural acreage carpeted by the autumnal fawn and dun of dormant grass. Surface heating and vertical mixing … [Read more...]
Crater from Giant Hail
This is what a 4+ inch hailstone does to the windshield of a Ford Crown Victoria. Quite the impressive crater, no? This was not our desired outcome. Give the predicament, however, it was a known risk. The evening before, south of I-40 on a northbound eastern Panhandle road, we found ourselves triangulated in the twilight between a tornado to the immediate southwest, another tornado a few miles … [Read more...]
Dying Twilight Tornado in Rain
After several years of ignoring it due to the low-light noisiness of my first DSLR, I finally decided to post this image and its story. The parent HP supercell had put on a nice structural show for us in the Oklahoma Panhandle, before becoming even more deeply rain-wrapped as it eased east-southeastward into deepening twilight. We honestly did not expect to dig out a tornado after it looked so … [Read more...]
Autumnal Okie Sundown
These famously colorful central Oklahoma sunsets are a marvel to behold year-round. Still, the long-lasting ones of late fall seem to be the most deeply immersive for the observer, when the sun sets at a steep angle and colors linger long enough for cloud forms to evolve noticeably through the tonal progression. Even for a sunset here, this peak-phase show was exceptionally brilliant and fluidly … [Read more...]
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