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June
29, 2001: Backyard Supercell! At first slowly then like a bomb it arises,
breathing, stretching, expanding in exploding cauliflowery white, lit
brilliantly by the sun. I
give chase to a point about 8 miles from my apartment and watch as it sits
almost stationary to my east, with a huge curtain of dark precipitation;
dazzling forks of lightning spewing out everywhere including in sunshine behind
my back-- well outside of the storm; vivid rainbows spilling out its side, and
increasing winds. Trees bend
widely in the outflow... With
awe I watch as a wall cloud takes form just to my SE; first as hunks of scud,
then as a solid ‘J’ pattern, sucking off the outflow from the storm’s rear
area to build itself. Clouds hang real close to earth about a mile away from me,
and above the wall, a dark pattern of concentric circles adds mystique. For sure
if the mid-level winds had some good shear, something would have dropped. As
the wall cloud draws closer, first big raindrops, then hail begins to fall. The
hail looks eerie, lit by the sun. Hail quickly gets bigger, with stones dime, nickel and even
nearly golf-ball sized hitting and splatting the earth - and my car.
It peaks out in an orgy of heavy rain mixed
with hailstones and then slowly tapers. Off to
the South I go to check out the wall cloud area. The wall cloud has dissipated
and a break in the overcast reveals a stunning thunderstorm top filled with
swirly curly cues of anvil mammatus. All
this in my neighborhood! To get
there, I drive through brilliantly sunlit cloudburst rains; a blinding and exhilarating
liquid that creates rivers in the poorly drained streets. Soon
sunset turns the cloud and its precipitation pinks and oranges, and even though
the storm dissipates as quickly as it started, it spends time throwing lightning
bolts off to my north, several miles outside the precipitation curtain. Deep
crackles and Booms respond. |
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