Flying above a Dust Storm

[Stephen Levine]

This past Tuesday, we flew about 35K feet elevation with a dust storm below. Having driven through dust storms while chasing storms across the Prairies, actually flying above one was quite fascinating.

I have posted three pictures of this on my blog site www.joyfulstormhunting.com.

Enjoy..

 

[Bill Schintler]

Looks like you're flying just north of ChowChilla, CA, when you took these; and the camera was looking SSE. You were obviously flying E out of the Bay area?

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=37.102836,-120.186996&spn=0.182911,0.363579&t=h&z=12

At the bottom of the last photo (behind the "2009, Stephen") is the Valley State women's prison:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=37.09914,-120.152063&spn=0.022728,0.045447&z=15

It never ceases to amaze me how the perspective of things changes from a height of 7 miles.

- bill s.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Above: Dust storm from 35,000 feet (over AZ / CA border) in March 2004.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you, Bill for your research. I think it's so cool that you tagged my locale exactly! I deeply appreciate it.
Thanks for your share Christopher as well.

 

[Steven Gliebe]

That's really neat. It does almost look like you're looking down at a couple of dust devils.

I wonder if anybody has captured a shot looking down at a tornado.

 

[Stephen Levine]

That's really neat. It does almost look like you're looking down at a couple of dust devils.

Thank you for pointing that out, Steven.. This is quite possible, since I could see the dust ascending, even at 35K feet and it did look like one column was visibly rotating. It just never occurred to me that we could be looking down on a dust devil.