The most amazing atmospheric event you have ever witnessed?

[Danny Neal]

I was talking to a few people about this. In the years we've all been alive, what is the #1 most amazing phenomenon you have seen through nature? Could be chasing, could be as a child, could be just sitting on your porch at night looking into the atmosphere.

I think the most amazing display of nature I have ever seen was my second Kansas storm chase in 2001. Seeing the amazing beauty of an isolated supercell over an emerald green Kansas prairie. From initiation to death across all of southern Kansas. Was in perfect position to view 2 of its beautiful tornadoes. Only storm in that area all day.

A close second was seeing a double rainbow on Pikes Peak, Colorado, right after a hailstorm. Seeing the storm in the distance, with a glistening ocean of white (the hail shining in the sunshine) from that high up was just spectacular.

It would just be interesting to hear what everyone else has to say about the one thing that comes into mind to them when they hear the words "nature" - "weather" - "atmosphere"

 

[MClarkson]

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm132/mclarkson/IMG_0063.jpg

A few weak cells popping up in central Washington, with Little Tahoma Peak on the right, and some scattered clouds beneath us. Looking east from Rainier.


in close second, the eyewall of Jeanne.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

I'd have to say the Greensburg supercell and tornado. The shear size of the supercell and the incredible inflow that was gusting close to 70mph with the tornado through the lightning, what an eerie and unforgettable image that was, it will always be embedded in my memory. I still can not grasp that one tornado destroyed the entire town it was a heart braking and life changing experience for me personally. In retrospect I just imagine how much debris must have been flying around that tornado, it would be something to see had it been daytime.

 

[James Langford]

OKC LP Supercell

I know I have posted this pic a few other times, but this was the most amazing weather related thing I have ever seen:

A friend and I had chased this little storm from SW of Oklahoma City NE through town. When we got out of town, we came upon this small field, and everything was setup just perfectly for pictures and video. We were able to watch the cell spin away for about 15 minutes before we needed to move to catch up with it.

Video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fwhIkfQFCE

James

 

[Danny Neal]

I know I have posted this pic a few other times, but this was the most amazing weather related thing I have ever seen:



A friend and I had chased this little storm from SW of Oklahoma City NE through town. When we got out of town, we came upon this small field,

and everything was setup just perfectly for pictures and video. We were able to watch the cell spin away for about 15 minutes before we needed to move to catch up with it.

Video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fwhIkfQFCE

James

LOL! This would probably be my number one if that happened right over Chicago. Not even producing a tornado, but to see the storm like that just hovering over a city. I would be awe-struck. Something so beautiful, yet so powerful.

Although seeing it over a large city would be wondrous (just by sight, of course I wouldn't want damage or anything to occur) I think you have captured the perfect example of what storm chasing is all about. I know it is outside of OKC but from the picture alone, it is you, the storm, and the sky. Great shot!

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

This one is easy, May 14-15 2005 Extreme Geomagnetic storm. The red and green pillars are cool and all, but nothing, nothing is as cool as those "vapor" rolls going in waves from north to south across the entire visible sky at several thousand mph(guessing). Looked like rolls of horribly fast forming fog at high altitude flat out screaming across the sky. They really don't show up in photographs. I am pretty sure I have evidence of them in some from 2004, but a still will make it seem less impressive than ones mind. The speed and the way they formed and vanished was just flat out awesome. The 2004 extreme storm I only saw them briefly late during the event. The 2005 show, they were really common. If the beams were way north on the horizon you really didn't see these things. Only when the beams were south AND very strong did these "vapor" waves form. Everyone needs to see that stuff once in their life. I know another chaser from NE has seen a few Aurora displays and had never seen those till that part of the 2005 event, and he was impressed. They made the pillars of red and green seem really boring.

 

[Gerrit Gulden]

I second what Mike said, However my experience with Aurora's here in Idaho was minimal with reds and orange some yellow, yet it was my first time ever seeing this type of phenomena and I was so excited that I woke everybody in my house up at around 3am, youd think they would have been mad but they still thank me to this day. I wished I had thought of taking photos when I saw the aurora's but I was too caught in the moment.

-gerrit

 

[John Hudson]

Without a doubt, it would have to be the first tornado I ever saw, at age five (sorry, no pics). Most of us can't really remember much from so long ago, but I'll always remember the sultry morning and afternoon that preceded the storm. I remember thinking there was something wrong with the sky, when it turned a sickly green color.

I was on my trike in the front yard when the landspout touched down about five or six miles northeast of our house, and there were all kinds of debris falling and spinning through the air. I can remember seeing one of those inflatable kiddie pools go whizzing overhead like some surreal UFO, and heard the wind strumming frightening chords in the overhead wires.

When my mom came out to herd me and my brothers into the house, there were clumps of straw falling from the sky (the funnel hit a barn just outside the city limits).

Unforgettable.


John

 

[jeremy wilson]

No pics of mine either, But it has to be several large meteors streaking across the sky at the same time. They moved in long slow arcs and left behind red trails that stretched across half the horizon.

It's either that or seeing cg's pound the ground in a rare southern oklahoma blizzard.

 

[Eric Flescher]

most amazing phenomenon

Thanks for posting this thread. Several in my mind- difficult to pick just one but here goes

(1) 5/29/2004 Dearborn tornado, the other wallclouds all around it and the other funnel/ tornado to the west, The KMBC helicopter was in the air shooting it while I was videotaping it from the ground from several miles south

(2) 1979 incoming bow echo storm which came into Ann Arbor , MI area that made the sky turn an amazing lime-green color before it tore up the power stations etc

(3) Nature's Greatest spectacle - the 6 total solar eclipses I have observed . The grand 1999 one in which I captured a video coming from 40 miles away and then darkening and totality. The picture below is a few seconds before the shadow is right on top of us. The band at the bottom near the horizon is the layer of clouds showing the giant lunar shadowing passing over the clouds 40 miles to the NWest. It races up over us , the landscape darkened got darker and darker in the sequence until totality and the diamond ring came out.

(4) the atmospheric ripple effect called shadow bands that are sometimes observed before or after total solar eclipses. Supposedly caused by the ripples in the atmospheric layers that lay themselves on to the ground. They look like the waves on the bottom of swimming pools. We saw them for over 6 minutes (quite long) after 2001 African total eclipse in Zambia, S. Africa totality. I was able to capture them on film (as well as seeing totality itself ).

(5) A Green fireball Perseid meteor in the 1970s that I saw in Providence , RI. It was called a stationary fireball (-6 magnitude) which looked like that Startrek fireball weapon in which the fireball grows and comes toward you. It came toward me , expanded til half the size or full size of moon and then faded out..........wowwwwwww

(6) a couple of years ago, during the Perseid meteor shower in the early evening , a long crackling, and sparking along the way fireworks golden meteor rising from the East over our observatory. Special kind that skip through the higher parts of the atmosphere before the main part of the shower appears

(7) the amazing turbulence in the wallcloud/ beaver tail etc that Doug Raflik and I caught saw Texas in June 2002

 

[D. Hayes]

Triple white rainbows in Honolulu that were so bright they were almost too bright to look at. That was before I started carrying my camera in my truck. That was the coolest looking natural atmospheric event. I should say these were not fog bows. These were super bright rainbows that remixed the colors to be white again.

Unnatural, I seen a Russian booster rocket come across the night sky when I was about 12. Damn thing was so big you could see the writing down the side but I can't read Russian. I could hear that sucker sizzle as it streaked across the sky. Talk about a frightening moment, I was waiting to see a giant mushroom cloud coming from St. Louis for about 2 hours till my mom told me it was on the local news. Then I seen the space shuttle reenter at night about 10 years later, that was awesome too. Put work to a stand still at the air base till we found out what it was.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

(7) the amazing turbulence in the wallcloud/ beaver tail etc that Doug Raflik and I caught saw Texas in June 2002

Was that the great New Deal wall cloud? I've heard stories of that thing!

 

[Chris Nuttall]

I'd have to second the auroras. I was able to see them twice when I still lived in Norman....2001 and 2004. Unfortunately, I did have any pictures either. If Aaron's watching this thread, he might still have the pics from 2001.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

The May 22nd Wakeeney KS "Twilight tornado," my first "real" tornado experience (not from far away/weak); it only on the ground for ten seconds before getting rain wrapped, but it was absolutely breathtaking from our vantage. The sky was pumpkin-orange and when the funnel popped out to touch the ground, it reflected the orange almost all the way around the tube. Unfortunately video grabs we took and other video grabs from that angle weren't able to translate the memory I have of it properly ...

There was one day driving home to Lubbock where I saw low-lying mist/fog at the bottom of the Llano. It was years back when I lacked a camera, but it was an absolutely memorable moment. The Mars-like dust storms out there were mesmerizing, too, until I got sick of them.

Also in my memory is a solar eclipse from the 80's. I don't know what year - perhaps a buff on the board can recall it; it was a near-total eclipse for the Houston area. I was seeing my grandmother at the time, and we viewed it somewhere near the Texas coast. I had this little box to look at it, I think from some fast food restaurant. Maybe that's why my vision is so poor without contacts ...

 

[Danny Neal]

Next in line would be the March 12, 2006 Supercell as it passed near Latham IL.

That wasn't a storm.......that was a living breathing monster!!!

What I would really love to experience is passing by one of those boundaries where I could run down the road and it could be 80 and on the other side maybe 300 ft down it would be 40 and foggy.