As they often do, one of my favorite scenes of the 2022 storm season happened by chance. While I cruised north on a good dirt road, toward a closer view of a young, deep supercell, this wonderful pair of abandoned schoolhouses appeared in an open, green field off to the right. The scene not just beckoned—it practically begged and screamed—for me to stop for appreciative photography. Frontlit … [Read more...]
Striking Simplicity
Viewed across a treeless patch of prairie, this view of a single-channel discharge truly was "striking" in its simplicity. This was one of the last few flashes from a dying supercell. It struck in the forward-to-rear-flank core interface just north-northwest of the mesocyclone, whose small, remnant wall cloud is visible at nearer, upper center. In my experience, only a small minority of CGs … [Read more...]
Flank and Knuckles
For the longest time (as in, all afternoon until nearly sunset), this was a very frustrating chase day, as I had been waiting in northeastern New Mexico for one of three possible target areas to erupt with storms. Well...two did, with photogenic supercells, and they were a couple hours to the south and north-northeast. Storm attempts near me dried up. Some days just don't work out. Limping … [Read more...]
Kitt Peak Nimbostratus
A field of nimbostratus, fronting an oncoming cluster of thunderstorms, spread over the Kitt Peak telescope array, as seen from the desert floor about 4,000 feet below. This created the sort of nice dark-sky/sunlit-land contrast I've long enjoyed watching and shooting. These are just a few among over 20 optical and two radio telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, including the … [Read more...]
Two Split-Channel CGs
On a night of many lightning blasts, these two stood out. Straddling a tall downburst core, both the nearer and farther discharges featured split-channel grounding, though the bottom of the one in the distance was obscured somewhat by the downdraft's dust and rain foot. For this to happen, two branches of the invisible, downward-directed step leader must get grounded at the same time, each … [Read more...]
Hard Right Mover
Even with marginal middle-level winds, supercells still can develop and thrive by moving well to the right of that flow, as long as low-level hodographs are large enough. Cooperative boundaries such as convergence zones and slow-moving to stationary outflows can help too, supplying the storm with low-level vorticity, shear, and storm-relative winds not necessarily characteristic of the broader … [Read more...]
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