SkyPix

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Sucking Dust on the Great Plains

2024-07-09 By Roger Edwards

Sucking Dust on the Great Plains

Stunning in form on its own, this supercell north of Kit Carson sported a vast field of mammatus across the underside of the downshear anvil, near to far.  Meanwhile, a wall cloud under the right base, and arcus cloud under the left, could be seen clearly, despite all the intervening blowing dust.  Displacement of dust, sand and soil by wind is called an eolian process in geology.  This counts!  Here, many tons of dust, lofted from nearby dry fields by intense inflow, went right up into the updraft (the dark, fuzzy columns at lower middle, which weren’t rotating).  From there, some fell in rain or hail nearby, while the balance blew downwind in upper levels, potentially for hundreds of miles.  In this way, and even without a Dust Bowl-level drought and windstorm episode,  a great deal of High Plains dirt ends up in the Mississippi Valley and beyond.

3 WSW Firstview CO (8 Jun 24) Looking NW
38.81, -102.5923

Filed Under: Mini Cloud Atlas, The Majestic Supercell Tagged With: arcus, clouds, Colorado, convection, dust, Firstview, Great Plains, Kit Carson, landscapes, mammatus, shelf cloud, storms, supercells, thunderstorms, wall clouds, 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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