Horizons

[Danny Neal]

What is the furthest you have ever identified Cb on a horizon line? Pretty basic question, but I was travelling in the country side a few days ago when the Michigan tornado outbreak occured and I was in Central IL. The further I drove east I began seeing storm anvils/deep convection WAY off to the ENE. I checked my radar and noticed I was seeing the tops of storms near North of Ft. Wayne, IN. Which from my spot is 298 miles away. Is this possible? My dad says no because the curvature of the earth. I am pretty certain of what I saw. Thoughts? or Encounters of this kind? I know all of you while chasing have seen storms off on the horizon.....whats the furthest out you have seen?

On a side note, I recall watching one of the TVC videos maybe #1, of storm chasers zooming in, on a bomb of a supercell that looked at least 200 miles away. Anyone know what I am talking about? Another reason I ask is because where I am moving to, I will be able to see for MILE AND MILES unobstructed, so at night if I notice flickering off in the distance, I will know a storm 150 miles away is out there.

 

[Marcus Opitz]

Does an observation at 35000 feet count? I was enroute to one of the outbreaks in May near Wichita when I could see the anvil crawlers of what I thought was the Greensburg storm from somewhere over Iowa. Not sure of the exact distance but it was very far.

 

[Danny Neal]

Does an observation at 35000 feet count? I was enroute to one of the outbreaks in May near Wichita when I could see the anvil crawlers of what I thought was the Greensburg storm from somewhere over Iowa. Not sure of the exact distance but it was very far.

That would be quite sight! A shame you didn't snap some pictures of that...or did you? Definitely something that I wouldn't soon forget.

 

[scott r currens]

Yes it is possible under the right conditions. I remember a day that you could see the tops of storms in the Austin, TX area all the way from Norman, OK. That is about 325 miles!

 

[David Drummond]

Yeah out here in West Texas where it's flat as a pancake, not only can you see them 200-300+ miles away when it's a good storm, the often appear to be much closer than they really are.

The curvature of the earth doesn't play as big a part in seeing the top of a storm that's 10s of thousands of feet tall.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

If we take a large storm with tops to 60,000 feet or about 11 miles high and take the radius of the earth to be 3963 miles, using Pythagorus Theorem we get the following distance you could theoretically see the top of the storm (with the top at the horizon forming a right angled trianlge)

distance = sqrt(((3963 miles+11 miles)^2) - (3963 miles^2)) = about 300 miles.

This is the straight line to the top of the storm and not the distance across the curved surface of the earth to the location, but this shouldn't be drastically different.

Given possible haze or pollution, I'd say 300miles was pushing the upper limit you'd see a storm from, but certainly, at night the lightning illuminating the sky might be visible at that range.

 

[Danny Neal]

If we take a large storm with tops to 60,000 feet or about 11 miles high and take the radius of the earth to be 3963 miles, using Pythagorus Theorem we get the following distance you could theoretically see the top of the storm (with the top at the horizon forming a right angled trianlge)

distance = sqrt(((3963 miles+11 miles)^2) - (3963 miles^2)) = about 300 miles.

This is the straight line to the top of the storm and not the distance across the curved surface of the earth to the location, but this shouldn't be drastically different.

Given possible haze or pollution, I'd say 300miles was pushing the upper limit you'd see a storm from, but certainly, at night the lightning illuminating the sky might be visible at that range.

Thanks for the insight.....I was wondering how to figure that out and what the estimated line of sight may be. 300 miles was right around the ball park of where I spotted these storms....now I really wish I stopped and taken at least ONE picture of it. Its funny how massive you see a storm in your windshield, and then you realize its 100 miles away.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

Type the following into Google replacing the 'X' with a distance and it should give you the height in miles of a storm obscured due to the curvature of the earth.

(sqrt((3963^2)+(X^2)))-3963


You can then use google to convert to feet if you wish also by copy and pasting the answer back into google in the format "X miles in feet" It's pretty amazing the amount of a storm you can see at distances up to 100 miles away. I remember sitting in Alva, OK on May 4th watching the Greensburg Cell as it was up between Macksville and Great Bend. I'd have never have guessed how far away that storm actually was if we didn't have maps and radar available. It looked like it was only 20-30 miles away! Then again, that was my initiation to a Plains Supercell. Back here in England, the terrain and the nature of our storms mean you usually only hear them if they are more than 10 miles away

 

[Justin E. Reed]

Here in Jax, we can see the tops of storms up to Macon, GA, as far west as Panama City, and as far south as northern S. Florida, but it has to be either sunset, sunrise, or frontal passage in that order to location to see them here cause of the moist atmosphere inducing what we call St. Johns River Haze.

Now, in my hometown of Murfreesboro,TN I've seen them as far away as Eastern Arkansas, Southern Indiana, Central Alabama , and Atlanta,GA all over 200 miles away!

 

[John Bowles]

LMK has some pictures on their site somewhere of storm tops in Northern IL taken from the Louisville, KY office.

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Type the following into Google replacing the 'X' with a distance and it should give you the height in miles of a storm obscured due to the curvature of the earth.

(sqrt((3963^2)+(X^2)))-3963


You can then use google to convert to feet if you wish also by copy and pasting the answer back into google in the format "X miles in feet"

I think I just destroyed Google's search criteria lol. It was very confused after trying to enter that formula. It returned a result as a "huh?"

I have seem some pretty rock hard towers from my area (which isn't very flat) only to find out they were in southern Wisconsin. That's quite a ways away. Definitely not as far as some of the aforementioned, but still pretty cool.

 

[Danny Neal]

LMK has some pictures on their site somewhere of storm tops in Northern IL taken from the Louisville, KY office.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/lmk/photo_album/thunderstorms/sunset-thunder-ir2.jpg could this be it?

 

[B Ozanne]

I think visibility is the biggest issue here. The geometry says you can see a tall storm 300 miles away, but how often can you see through 300 miles of atmosphere? In this case you probably did.

On Mount Washington we could occasionally see Mount Marcy over 120 miles away in New York. Not only did we need clear air we needed some luck with refraction. Mount Marcy was over the horizon and it was only visible when there were inversions that let the light bend over the horizon.

 

[Charles Kuster]

I think the furthest away that I have ever seen a storm was this year while chasing in extreme south Kansas on May 31. We saw a storm off in the distance. I checked the map and the radar and realized that it was about 220 miles away. Later that night I was glad that it was too far away to chase, otherwise we might have missed the Oklahoma panhandle supercell that day.

 

[Danny Neal]

I think visibility is the biggest issue here. The geometry says you can see a tall storm 300 miles away, but how often can you see through 300 miles of atmosphere? In this case you probably did.

On Mount Washington we could occasionally see Mount Marcy over 120 miles away in New York. Not only did we need clear air we needed some luck with refraction. Mount Marcy was over the horizon and it was only visible when there were inversions that let the light bend over the horizon.

The sky was crystal clear for miles (except for those storms) thats what caught my eye. A cold front just swept through and we were sitting in the Upper 70's(77-79) with dewpont around 54 or so, a stark contrast from 95-79 the day before. I would normally have not noticed this if there were other fair weather Cu around. It is very rare, because sometimes I have trouble picking up Cb 75 miles away.

Interesting side note, when I went to CO. some years back we were on Pikes Peak and noticed way off in the distance like a flowing ocean it was odd, only to realize a Hail storm just passed through there not long before.....I would say thats a good 50-75 miles. Pretty sweet sight.