Traditional observing rule and cloud charts tag mountain-wave lenticulars as "altocumulus standing lenticularis" (ACSL)—even if the lenticular cloud has no convective, cumuliform component at all. Literally speaking, the AC part, and especially C, is usually wrong. Most lenticular clouds are entirely laminar, not convective, and thus should be altostratus standing lenticularis (ASSL), an … [Read more...]
Dusty Supercell Spotting
Storm observing, when the intervening boundary layer is thick with dust, sometimes can be a hazardous and near-futile exercise. Drought years in the High Plains do this most often, especially in strongly synoptically forced days, when intense "moist sector" winds raise a great deal of dust even ahead of the dryline, and ahead of dryline storms. Radar is a friend in these situations, both to … [Read more...]
Maine Sunset Reflections
Gently rippled waters reflected a variety of cirrus levels, both silhouetted and illuminated by sunset light along the Downeast Maine coastline. Mount Desert Narrows—forming an erratic strait between the like-named island on which I stood, and the mainland a few miles distant—opens here into the northern part of Western Bay, often quiet water belying the tumult of the nearby coastlines fronting … [Read more...]
Tube into Void
This supercell's first tornado was a short-lived, narrower, dusty tube, whose parent mesocyclone soon occluded and weakened. The next formed and tightened up nicely, with a small but well-developed wall cloud a few miles prior to the mesocyclone's crossing the only north-south road for about 30 miles. However, the wall cloud didn't grow and start spinning fast until moving off into the broad … [Read more...]
Another Moss Glen Falls
Vermont’s “other” Moss Glen Falls is not as tall as its northerly namesake, but just as beautiful in its fluid lacework tumbling down the bluff. This is one of those serene places where, on a mildly breezy day, one could spend hours lost in the sound of rushing water and deeply inhaling the occasional currents of cool, spray-moistened air. 2 N Granville VT (24 Sep 22) Looking W 44.018, -72.85 … [Read more...]
Shadows under a Busy Anvil
The front side of a "towering Texas sunset" had a remarkable rearward-directed spectacle on display too. This formerly tornadic storm continued to pump immeasurable quantities of condensate into the upper troposphere, vigorously enough to yield uncommon downshear knuckles, hybrid knuckle-mammatus formations, and (in the distance) more purely mammatus. Soon, as the moon peeked out from behind the … [Read more...]
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