Today's photo is of a cloud phenomenon that is very familiar to people who live on the great plains and the midwest -- Mammatus. In the foreground are the weather instrumentation of one of Vortex 2's probe vehicles. The instrument at middle measures dewpoint and temperature.
This was shot in western Kansas on June 10, 2009, after the probe vehicles pulled off the road into a small gravel lot, waiting for instructions. Eventually they were ordered to start running transects -- basically, 3 mile runs back and forth through the storm environment, collecting data the entire way. Later on this data will be fed into computer models (along with data from the radar units, etc.) and science will happen.
This was my last day on the Vortex chase -- a bittersweet end to a long journey. Bitter because chasing storms amazes me, but sweet because I was coming back to my wife and my life in Nebraska, which I'd take over chasing storms any day.
3 comments:
Wonderful picture!
I grew up in Indiana but don't remember seeing anything like this; amazing! Thank you for sharing such interesting and deeply moving pictures of storms.
This is the coolest thing ever! It looks like tiny molecules you would look at under a microscope.
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