These are just three of nearly 80 cloud-to-ground strikes I captured from this spot on a marvelously electrified (albeit sometimes very dusty) Arizona night, as a series of cores passed southwestward across the field of view to my north through west. Any one of these elegantly patterned channels of plasma could kill any living thing beneath, instantly. This is why lightning safety is important, … [Read more...]
36 Years After
Thirty-six years prior, that blown-out mountain back there mowed down this log, and millions of others, in a searing inferno of boiling-hot, debris-filled, EF5-tornado-strength wind survivable by no living thing. Many of these logs remain well-preserved because they were deeply sandblasted by fine, hot silica particles jammed with fierce force into every pore. Was this "weather damage"? You … [Read more...]
Every Which Way
This thunderstorm nearly had exhausted its lightning production by the time I got set up, but one of its last bursts was something special. To the eye, it was a bright but blinky flash of less than two seconds, with what appeared to be spectacular electrical spaghetti in more of the sky than my view. To the wide-angle camera lens, it was an intricate, complicated and multi-directional electrical … [Read more...]
Campo-21 Wide
To an avid storm observer, a nicely developed Great Plains supercell is akin to a delicious upside-down cake. A tornado is uncommon and just a "cherry on top"—or in this case, a cone on the bottom (right). In this wide-angle perspective west of Campo, CO, the tornado was widening and weakening at this point, after being a fairly stout, tall tube within its cage of rain and hail. Though this … [Read more...]
Chiricahua Twilight: Magenta
[Part 2 of 2] For this shot, I had retreated back to the vehicle, parked about 50 feet east of the Arizona/New Mexico line, due to light rain and just a little nearby lightning. I was barely in New Mexico; the fence, scrub brush and mountains are across the road in Arizona. The golden light of a few minutes before reddened, with more blue too, imparting a filtered magenta tone to sky and land … [Read more...]
Chiricahua Twilight: Copper
[Part 1 of 2] Standing exactly astride the Arizona/New Mexico line on a dirt road, I watched this astounding twilight scene unfold, just after sunset. A short-lived storm had formed over the Chiricahua Peak, tallest mountain in the range of the same name, as moist outflow air from an earlier convective event to the northeast was forced to rise upslope. As that storm weakened and its cloud base … [Read more...]
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