Silver Highway and Tormented Sky

Silver Highway and Tormented Sky

FTLComm - Birch Hills - May 17, 1999

Joseph Turner, the sometimes mad English painter created skies like these. Turner of course was known for is skyscapes and if it took being a little mad to appreciate them and create them, I am certain it was worth the journey.

These images were captured on the road Sunday around six in the early evening. The one above is of the silver highway above and East of Birch Hills while the one on the right is just West of Star City.

The remarkable weather system, or actually a series of systems that have created this odd condition of almost two full weeks of cloudy skies and occasional precipitation has been created by a very wet unstable airmass and the little tower cumulus on the right illustrates what the sky is actually made of. Little CBs like this one are trapped together as rising columns of wet air and when viewed from below give you the skies you see in the top two pictures. This little cloud has a base of perhaps 3,000 feet and a top that exceeds ten thousand. The low temperatures prevent it from growing taller.

This picture is similar to the top of the page picture but is perhaps a little less dramatic. These images were shot through the windshield of the van just by proping the camera up on top of the steering wheel and clicking, so I had no way at the time of knowing just what I captured.

But the dramatic clouds and brilliant shiny road were what I was after and I think I was able to capture the essence of the moment.

We are expecting things to clear up a bit later today but there are rumors of more systems like this on the way.

Silver Highway and Tormented Sky

*FTLComm - Birch Hills - May 17, 1999*
Joseph Turner, the sometimes mad English painter created skies like these. Turner of course was known for is skyscapes and if it took being a little mad to appreciate them and create them, I am certain it was worth the journey. These images were captured on the road Sunday around six in the early evening. The one above is of the silver highway above and East of Birch Hills while the one on the right is just West of Star City.

The remarkable weather system, or actually a series of systems that have created this odd condition of almost two full weeks of cloudy skies and occasional precipitation has been created by a very wet unstable airmass and the little tower cumulus on the right illustrates what the sky is actually made of. Little CBs like this one are trapped together as rising columns of wet air and when viewed from below give you the skies you see in the top two pictures. This little cloud has a base of perhaps 3,000 feet and a top that exceeds ten thousand. The low temperatures prevent it from growing taller.

This picture is similar to the top of the page picture but is perhaps a little less dramatic. These images were shot through the windshield of the van just by proping the camera up on top of the steering wheel and clicking, so I had no way at the time of knowing just what I captured. But the dramatic clouds and brilliant shiny road were what I was after and I think I was able to capture the essence of the moment. We are expecting things to clear up a bit later today but there are rumors of more systems like this on the way.