Electric Tsunami

June 19th, 2011

Welcome to the most ridiculous supercellular nighttime structure of my life. You never expect a chase to end with something like this. Usually you end your day driving home in relative silence, through the rain of a big MCS (meso convective system, i.e. squall line) while thumbing through the day's images. We had started to do just that, until near-constant lightning revealed that the show wasn't over. This was taken a bit after the tsunami stage and a bit closer to the updraft. It was inflowing so much moisture that at times you'd get these annoying midlevel inflow streamers obscuring the structure. Biiiiig lower level inflow tail on the right, then it takes you up and you can see how it corkscrews from there. Not sure I've ever seen those "rings" emanating out at the top where the anvil would begin. And as you can see, ridiculous lightning as well. I'll probably post a couple more shots just of this same scene, with different lighting/bolts. What a night

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