A wet winter and spring left northeast New Mexico’s volcanic plains thickly upholstered in verdant grasses, some of which already were ripening by early June. As the partly cloudy forenoon hours quickly yielded to orographically forced thunderstorms of midday, and their anvil canopies spread above the land, light and shadow became both more subtle and deeper at the same time, shifting slowly hither and yon as if in a graceful jostle for supremacy. At the point when this storm began dumping a rain core nearly to ground level, the scene reached a climax of visual fascination, painting the shift from near to intermediate shadow to distant light atop the vegetative and topographic textures, in a way not experienced before or since. Such unique lighting of an intrinsically beautiful landscape made this one of my very favorite shots from 2007. The strengthening, high-based storm soon would drop a core to the ground and pepper the landscape with lightning strikes, including this one.
3 NNE Capulin NM (3 Jun 7) Looking S
36.7811, -103.986Storm Shadow on Volcanoes
A wet winter and spring left northeast New Mexico’s volcanic plains thickly upholstered in verdant grasses, some of which already were ripening by early June. As the partly cloudy forenoon hours quickly yielded to orographically forced thunderstorms of midday, and their anvil canopies spread above the land, light and shadow became both more subtle and deeper at the same time, shifting slowly hither and yon as if in a graceful jostle for supremacy. At the point when this storm began dumping a rain core nearly to ground level, the scene reached a climax of visual fascination, painting the shift from near to intermediate shadow to distant light atop the vegetative and topographic textures, in a way not experienced before or since. Such unique lighting of an intrinsically beautiful landscape made this one of my very favorite shots from 2007. The strengthening, high-based storm soon would drop a core to the ground and pepper the landscape with lightning strikes, including this one.
3 NNE Capulin NM (3 Jun 7) Looking S
36.7811, -103.986