SkyPix

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Stout Late Twilight Tornado

2023-04-16 By Roger Edwards

Stout Late Twilight Tornado

This fairly stout tornado barely was visible as it churned northward across the flat farmland southwest through northwest of Frederick.  I had seen this supercell’s first tornado, a brief cone also to the west of US-183, while driving; it had disappeared as soon as I found a safe place to pull over.  Determined not to let this better-organized vortex escape the camera, but unsurprisingly bedeviled by lack of beneficially illuminating lightning out on the far part of a long, mature supercell hook, I had to pull out all the stops—f-stops, that is—and still barely got it.  Since I shoot all manual, each step was deliberate:  crank the aperture wide (f3.5), blast the ISO high (3200), haul the shutter speed out long (1 second, a lot higher than I’d prefer for something as quickly evolutionary as a tornado!).  That drank in not only the final, dimmest vestiges of twilight west of the storm, but the reddish, still largely sodium-vapor town lights of Frederick to the north (right, off-screen), which illuminated some storm structure around the mesocyclone from the east.  It also revealed headlights from oncoming traffic to my south, reflected off the road and adjoining vegetation.

2 SSW Frederick OK (12 Oct 21) Looking NW
34.3639, -99.0282

RADAR

Filed Under: Tornadoes Tagged With: convection, Frederick, Great Plains, highways, Oklahoma, storms, supercells, thunderstorms, tornado, twilight, weather

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About

Welcome to SkyPix, an online photo book of clouds, weather and water by Roger Edwards. As in a printed coffee-table book, every image has its own page with a unique story. After all, meaningful photography is much more than just picture-taking; it is visually rendering a moment in place and time from a perspective like none other. As a scientist and an artist, I hope my deep passion for the power and splendor of our skies and waters shines through in these pages. If you are a cloud and weather aficionado, outdoor enthusiast, outdoor or nature photographer, art lover, or anyone who craves learning, enjoy...

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Further images from this photographer may be found at:
Roger Edwards Image of the Week
Roger Edwards Digital Galleries
Storms Observed Chase BLOG

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