What kind of phenomena is this?

[Shane Lee]

I see a lot of people posting pictures here regarding storm phenomena so I thought I'd contribute one for you to chew on. This photo was taken from an aircraft cruising at about 13,000 feet over Iraq. This was seen in the area of a strong echo on the onboard weather radar. I know what I think it is.....I'm interested to see what you all think. Thanks for your attention and educated discussion!

 

[Wes Carter]

Is it a microburst?

This text was added to make the message long enough to post.

 

[David Wolfson]

The water vapor/smoke emitter in the lower left sure looks like a Gaussian plume, e.g. point source. I think you can almost see or imagine a power plant at its base and a flood plain with multiple water courses -- Tigris/Euphrates system? Or it could be agricultural burn-off smoke being spread around by a very minor "downburst".

 

[Shane Lee]

Well, I have flown over this area before many times....and there is absolutely NOTHING out there but featureless terrain. Is there anything else that could have caused that blow up in the lower left of the frame? I agree, there looks like there is a "emitter" in the lower left corner and I'm puzzled too. I didn't exactly have a lot of time to observe. I am leaning toward some kind of downburst, but I wanted to see if anyone could definitively tell me what I saw. Wish the picture could have been better, but I was dumb and left my checklist in the cockpit window sill. Darn it!

 

[Robert Dewey]

A sand-filled gustnado? I can't tell what type of terrain you're over (sandy?).

 

[Jeff Duda]

The fibrous, fuzzy look to the cloud above the feature combined with the apparent spread of the dust at the ground would seem to indicate this is some sort of downburst or microburst. The picture doesn't make it too easy to tell due to the reflection from the glass.

 

[Shane Lee]

Yes, I was a little busy at the time and spent the evening kicking myself when I saw the lack of quality of the picture. Thank you all for your answers.

 

[Jason Foster]

Not sure if I'm seeing this right but I also seem to see a ring of smoke, starting from the verticle (vortex look-alike) feature then extending toward the center of the photo positioned near to the ground. Not sure if that is what I see, or just other stuff from reflections, etc. If it's a true ring of additional sand/smoke, might help in the analysis.

 

[Bart_Comstock]

My money is on microburst. Here is what I get from the image:

 

[Lanny Dean]

If it is a microburst it is a very dry one, this could be explained by the area it was in (Iraq) however, to me it looks like virga above some sort of a "ring" of smoke.
Barts graphic is pretty convincing though....hard to tel! lol

 

[Scott Weberpal]

I agree with the microburst crowd, when you enhance the contrast, it's even more obvious...

 

[Dann Cianca]

And the large plume possibly a gustnado on the edge?

 

[Bart_Comstock]

I'm not so sure that is a gustnado. I think it is just a wall of dust curling back over what would be the rain foot if this had been a wet microburst.

 

[Paul Knightley]

Sure looks like a microburst - quite common to get spin-ups along the leading edge of any gust front too, so the 'plume' could be such a spin-up.

 

[Jason Foster]

Yeah...Scotts and Barts graphics certainly illustration the area which I was seeing and it sounds like the most reasonable explanation.

Now...who is going to play with the contrast more so we can read the (top secret???) document that is being reflected in the window....