"Pulse" Storms Make For Gorgeous Summer Skies

A small, isolated storm formed over the Adirondacks around
sunset last evening, as seen looking toward the southwest
from St. Albans, Vermont. 

One of the many things I like about summer is the sky is far more interesting and beautiful than in the winter.

Summer is the time of year when scattered showers and thunderstorms are more likely, without those dreary, boring overcast skies that come in the colder seasons.

Such was the case last evening when isolated thunderstorms erupted over mountainous terrain of northern Vermont and the Adirondacks of New York.

These dramatic looking, but usually harmless and brief thunderstorms often form during these hot, humid days.

There's really no weather systems to create updrafts that would form organized lines of clusters of long lasting storms.    But the atmosphere in these conditions is primed for storms, if only there were a trigger.

That trigger is the mountains. The strong June sun helps creates updrafts that also help cause light local breezes.  If things line up just right, one of these breezes hits a mountain slope and is forced to rise.

That breeze going up the side of a mountain can be just enough to trigger a storm.  That upslope breeze becomes a rapidly rising column of air, which forms almost immediately into a towering thunderstorm, the kind we saw here and there last evening. They go from nothing to immense, often in just minutes

Since these clouds are so tall, they can be seen from very far away. People in the Burlington area saw a gorgeous white tower erupt to the northeast early Friday evening. That storm was near Greensboro, almost 50 miles away as the crow flies.

Beautiful isolated storm last evening in
northern Vermont. Photo via Twitter
by Charlie of Mystery Springs
@SlowWaterMvmnt

Unlike in some hot spells, when haze obscures the best views, the skies Friday were more clear, making the beautiful storms more striking.  They were isolated, so looking east, the low angle sun turned the clouds brilliant white, surrounded by a deep blue background.

Some lucky bastard up near Greensboro was probably treated to a brief downpour for their garden, and maybe a lightning strike or two.

These so-called "pulse" storms die pretty much as fast as they form.  Remember, there's no real weather system, or cold front, or boundary to continue the updraft.

Once they move beyond that mountain that caused the initial updraft in the first place, the storm collapses. The process from initiation to dissipation can take less than an hour.

I did say these pulse storms are usually harmless. But there is one moment - when they're dying - when they can become momentarily dangerous.  The storm collapses, often in a very localized gush of wind and heavy rain.

This collapse could become a very local microburst, in which wind is strong enough to cause damage in a very small area.  One end of a street might have fallen trees from this type, while a mile away, there was just a gentle breeze.

Timing out these collapses is hard, and since they're so local and quick, they're often over and done with by the time the National Weather Service can issue a storm warning.

On some occasions, a pulse storm can keep forming in the same location all afternoon and evening, and just not move. In those cases, you can get a small area of dangerous flash flooding while immediate surrounding areas remain dry.

These two hazards only sometimes happen. More often than not, a pulse storm will quickly collapse and die with no danger involved. That's why they're called pulse storms. They quickly form, then quickly fade. It was just a quick pulse.

After we lost the Greensboro storm last evening, a couple others formed in the Adirondacks, contributing to a gorgeous sunset as the orange light lit up the towering clouds to our west and south.

If you missed these beautiful storms last night, not to worry. The weather pattern is kind of stuck in this hot, humid, still and featureless set up.  This will favor more scattered, slow moving and brief "pulse" storms today, Sunday and Monday.

They tend to start forming in the early to mid afternoon on these hot days, and fade with the setting sun.  The storms tend to avoid large valleys, so we in the dusty Champlain Valley will just be bystanders, begging in vain for just a little rain from these brief showers.

A weak cold front will approach us during the upcoming mid to late week.  That will provide enough forcing for more sustained, and somewhat more widespread showers and storms starting perhaps on Tuesday and continuing into Wednesday.

Wild, Icy Optical Effects In New Hampshire Wows Meteorologists, Sky Watchers

This photo by Alex Kotzias, taken from a New Hampshire
ski lift recently shows at least nine really cool sky
and light effects caused by ice crystals. To have so
many effects at once is extremely rare.

Interesting things can happen in the sky when it's cold and snowy and ice crystals dance in the atmosphere like countless tiny diamonds.

Such was the case recently around Franconia, New Hampshire when ice crystals and sunshine combined to create some surreal optical effects. Hat tip to "Scoop" Cronin for alerting me to all this.

Some of these effects in the sky are common, some are pretty rare. And it's almost unheard of to have nine - count them, nine - of these effects going on in the skyh at once.

The Washington Post Capital Weather Gang took note of this and the reporters involved couldn't believe the great photos. Neither can I. They got one photo from a New Hampshire Department of Transportation worker who caught a photo of the remarkable sky, but "only" captured seven of the atmospheric events.

Capital Weather Gang ran a story about it, and the original photo was topped by another, taken by Alex Kotzias as he road a chairlift at Cannon Mountain Ski Area.  All of the odd things in the sky depend upon the presence of ice crystals.

A common but beautiful phenomenon in the photos is a halo which is a multi-colored band forming a 22 arc around the sun.

Then there's a parhelic circle, which the Capital Weather Gang describes as a monochromatic Hula-Hoop piercing the sun itself. These thigs form at the same height in the sky as the sun itself.

Where the parhelic circle and the 22 degree arc of the halo intersect, that's where you get a sun dog, which is a brighter spot of light. They sort of look like small companions of the sun. Kind of like a dog next to its human companion.

The light show elements described above are fairly common, but other things in the photo are not. One is called a Parry arc and the other is an upper tangent arc, both located above the location of the sun.

Another photo from New Hampshire shows seven of the effects
caused by ice crystals. Capital Weather Gang labeled
them for us. 

Parry arcs were first observed during William Edward Parry's naval search for a Northwest Passage in the Arctic on April 8 1820. Accompanying the Parry arc in the photos is an upper tangent arc. The Capital Weather Gang says both of these flatten out as the day progresses, and eventually merge.

Above these two things are a superlateral arc and a circumzenithal arc, which are above the Parry and upper tanget arcs. The superlateral arc curves down, while the circumzenithal arc looks like a bowl.

On top of everything else, the photo from the ski lift shows diamond dust. Those are little white specks which are ice crystals closer to the photographer.

The photos from New Hampshire are filled out by two more common light displays. A shaft of light called a sun pillar extends directly upward from the sun. Clouds low to the horizon cast bands of shadows from the sunlight. These bands of shadows and light are called crepsuscular rays.

I'll never remember the names of most of the things Capital Weather Gang describes and neither will you. The important thing is how cool and beautiful all these are. It's a good reminder to look toward our rare bursts of sun in our dark winters to see some really gorgeous stuff created by something as simple as ice crystals.

I've noticed all of these things described with the sun except for the Perry arc and upper tangent arc numerous times. But mostly you see only a couple of these at a time. To have nine in one photograph is just stunning.  Wish I was in Franconia, New Hampshire that day.

See What Hail Did To This Roof

The other day I told you about that awful hail storm in Texas, which included hail the size of grapefruit in spots.

The pic in this post shows the view from inside a Wylie, Texas home attic after the storm ended and the sun came out.

(Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see.)

You can see the many holes blasted through the roof by the hail.

You can imagine the rest of the damage done to this house. Between the holes in the roof and the windows shattered by the hailstones, no doubt plenty of rainwater gushed into this house, too.

Not to mention LOTS of other houses. In addition to this kind of damage, theres a lot of destruction from water, too.

You can see why bad hailstorms, when they hit populated areas like they've been doing in Texas recently, can cause a billion dollars in damage or more.

By the way, a day after the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs were pummeled by this huge hail, another very destructive hail storm hit the San Antonio area. Among other things, that hailstorm in San Antonio totaled a bunch of new cars at a BMW dealership.

The area around Wylie and Denton, Texas had a destructive hailstorm in March. Some people had already had roofs replaced and cars repaired from that storm, only to have them destroyed again this week, as the Dallas Morning News reports. 

I hate to think about how the insurance premiums are going to go up around there.

Nasty British Flood Fails To Deter Pub Crawl

These two British guys were not going to allow a
little weekend flooding let them stop enjoying a
relaxing afternoon at the beer garden. 

A nasty flood from a strong early winter storm hit parts of Britain over the weekend.

There was some pretty extensive flooding, especially around Cumbria.

Two storms, one named Abigail, the other, hitting Monday, called Barney also caused widespread wind damage.

During Abigail - the storm with more flooding - two guys decided to go to a beer garden for an afternoon brew.

A little flooding wasn't going to deter them. It was Sunday afternoon, and they were going to have their pint, dammit!

I love how nonchalant they're pretending to be, too

They Make Everything Big In Texas. Including Hailstorms

LOTS of hail in western Texas on Monday. It didn't help
travel too much. Photo by Tony Laubach.  

I know. Winter wasn't that long ago, and the thought still makes you shudder, which means you are probably horrified by the photo in this post.

It's not a snowstorm, though. (Though it did manage to snow a couple of inches up in North Dakota during the past weekend.)

No, the photo by Tony Laubach is of a hailstorm near Pecos, in the western part of Texas. It accumulated a foot deep, and as you can see, didn't exactly help travel much.

Texas has been the epicenter of storminess this spring, with frequent floods, hailstorms, tornadoes and supercell thunderstorms.

An El Nino weather pattern seems to be developing, and that seems to favor wet weather and storms in Texas.

Flash flood watches and warnings are up for much of Texas today and perhaps through the rest of the week, as up to eight inches of rain are forecast for the next few days in northern Texas.

Parts of Texas, especially to the west, might get some more severe storms and hail today and tomorrow. 

By the way, some strong storms are forecast in New England, including my home turf in Vermont, could produce some gusty winds and hail today. But nothing like in Texas.

My new hostas might get dinged with a little hail today outside my St. Albans, Vermont home, but I probably won't be shoveling a foot of hail out of my driveway, so that's good.

Here's StormChasingVideo.com's view of the Pesos, Texas hailstorm.

Amazing Fire Whirl Spins Over Missouri Field

This photo, which popped up on the Weather Channel and appears to be legit and not a photoshop scam, shows an amazing firewhirl in Chillicothe, Missouri last weekend. 

A farmer was burning his field and a gust of wind got the whirl going.

According to the Jon Erdman of the Weather Channel, via the Washington Post:

"Firewhirls turn and burn. They are rapidly spinning vortices that form when air superheated by an intense wildfire rises rapidly, consolidating low-level spin from winds converging into the fire like a spinning ice skater, pulling its arms inward."

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma and surrounding states, the fire danger remains very high today.

Wildfires killed a person in Oklahoma Sunday, and new fires Monday forced evacuations near the town of Woodward, Oklahoma.

Rain might finally hit parts of the region later today and Thursday, but almost all of the rain will fall east of the sections of the High Plains where extreme drought and the wildfires have settled in.

Plus, any rain that does fall in and near Oklahoma will likely come in the form of severe thunderstorms over the next couple days, which could produce huge hail, near hurricane force wind gusts and a few tornadoes.

Meanwhile, more to the north, a winter storm warning is up today for the Black Hills of South Dakota, which are due for five to eight inches of snow.

And the nations wild weather train rolls on.

Great Satellite View Of Today's Massive Storm

The huge storm that caused all kinds of issues in the eastern half of the nation, including blizzards,

tornadoes, floods, severe thunderstorms and high winds, looked awesome today in this satellite photo from NOAA:

Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see the details.