Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board thunderstorm cloud photos

Does anyone have any photos of thunderstorm clouds over the Sierra, preferably taken from the San Joaquin Valley? Any photos of thunderstorm clouds over the Sierra will do, though.

I am giving a presentation about cloud seeding at an aviation workshop this week at the National Weather Service in Phoenix. I worked at a cloud-seeding company in Fresno in the summer of 1997. I can picture the thunderstorm clouds over the mountains in my mind, but I don't have any actual photos.

Thank you.

These are two I have from my collection. I don't know if this is what you had in mind though.

Severe thunderstorm over Guitar Lake in July 2003


Building thunderstorm viewed from Sunrise High Sierra Camp in Yosemite June 2004


I know you're looking for the more dramatic moments but these are a couple of memorable ones for me. Hope they help!

I think that bottom picture is from Sunrise Camp in Yosemite?

Here's the weather turning on the Owens Valley side south from Bishop:

<img>

It's from <a href="http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1486688/2/75405690#75405690">my site</a>.

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com

I found this online at the Berry Creek Inn site. The caption for this picture on the Berry Creek website says it is a big thunderhead over the Sierra.

<img src="http://www.berrycreekca.org/images/DSC00001.JPG" />

Not that big, looks like it "only" goes up to 30,000 feet or so. The really big ones go above 50,000 feet and often have an anvil shape at the top (from the high winds). Those are the ones that spawn tornadoes.

<img src="http://www.colby.edu/cpse/equipment2/highclouds/cb.jpg" />

some pictures of "Sierra Waves" from the southern Sierra on a trip of mine:

http://www.outdoorsclub.org/PastTrip/PastTripDetail.asp?id=8126&leadername=Ken+Murray

Sierra Sam - Personally, I didn't think it was that big either (not part of an organized system); but I was mostly repeating what the caption said on the Berry Creek site.

As a severe weather enthusiast, a long time storm spotter for the NWS in Ohio, and an occasional storm chaser when a convenient opportunity presents itself, I'm very familiar with thunderstorms and tornado formation and what causes anvils, etc. Actually, some of the most severe cells can go as high as 70K feet (as an unusually severe line of tornadic cells in northwest-central Illinois did some years ago).

It's a fascinating pursuit which I have been intrigued with and have studied informally since I first saw the famous tornado in "The Wizard of Oz" when I was a kid (I've heard a number of chasers say this was also their original inspiration).

For a while, I even used to give an annual tornado presentation to an elementary school class at a local school during tornado preparedness week. The Q&A sessions were always enjoyable.

CaT

Trailwalker, Sams' not gonna see many tornados in the Sierras, as you already know. Harvey

Here are some pictures taken on July 7, 2004 of a tornado that actually touched down on Rockwell Pass near Mt. Whitney:







Here is the link to the complete discussion of that thunderstorm event. It is the highest ever recorded tornado (12,000 ft.) to touch down in the U.S.:
http://tornado.sfsu.edu/RockwellPassTornado/index.html
http://tornado.sfsu.edu/RockwellPassTornado/Page2.html

I think the top two pictures were originally taken by Snowdude and Snownymph who frequent this board occasionally. Here is the link to their pictures of that trip:
http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/168275615yYZFxp
The bottom picture was taken by Bill Hensley.

It is amazing how big these storms can get! It's also a situation that I really don't cherish when I'm underneath one of them and they "light up the sky!"

awesome!

This is a link to what is actually the scientific paper written on this phenomenon, including some astonishing radar images that document the tornado:

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/115107.pdf

Thank you to everyone who posted photos. I managed to find a photo on the Internet of thunderstorm clouds from Fresno. The photo is a slide of my PowerPoint presentation: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/aviation/SAWS_Workshop/26.ppt#307,15