Water and Light

They do some pretty spectacular things. If you don't take minute or two to just see it,, I mean really see it, try to understand it, you might miss it.

Today some heavy thunderstorms passed through southern New England. Multiple flash flood, severe thunderstorm, and tornado warnings were issued. My town received little but brief gusty winds and heavy rain. But the linear outflow dominate storm that hit was a sight to behold. Though low clouds and haze muddled what likely would have been an exceptional shelf cloud, the backside of the gust front was sculpted into an ominous structure called "the whale's mouth". Rain cooled air undercuts the warm moist inflow feeding into the storm's forward flank, lofting it behind the gust front and up into the storm, twisting and molding it into a roiling structure with rapid upward motion. Those not well versed in storm structure may misinterpret this as signs of tornadic potential, but in reality it is evidence that, scary as it may look, this storm won't be dropping a funnel any time soon.