severe thunderstorm – Roadkill Crossing

The backside of a severe thunderstorm. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh

After last evening’s storm passed, I stepped out the back door to check my rain gauge when this amazing scene stopped me in my tracks.

We had yet another storm, but it clearly had intensified as it approached the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park, which serve as the eastern boundary of Rockingham County, Virginia, where we live.

The view of the mammatus clouds from my driveway. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh

The setting sun dramatically illuminated the eastward-moving thunderstorm. The pouch-like clouds are mammatus clouds, formed when colder air aloft sinks into warmer air below.

Mammatus clouds almost always occur either at the lead of a severe thunderstorm or at the rear of the anvil-shaped thunderstorm crown. For meteorologists and those who appreciate and study clouds, spotting mammatus clouds is a rarity.

Since such clouds don’t last long, I wanted a view with a better line of sight. So, I headed to nearby Heritage Oaks Golf Course, behind an elementary school, which gave me an unobstructed view of the fast-moving storm.

As you can see, the turbulent clouds had already changed in the five minutes it took me to arrive at the golf course. Plus, the sun had set behind the Allegheny Mountains 30 miles to the west, changing the intensity and direction of its rays. Consequently, the colors of the clouds mellowed to more orange than white and yellow.

Please click on the photos to enlarge them.

Still, I was ecstatic to capture these shots, so much so that I never did check the rain gauge.

I went out in search of some rare birds for the Shenandoah Valley: Mississippi Kites. Unfortunately, a storm front quickly moved across the Appalachian Mountains and into the valley.

Fortunately, as the storm clouds built, they were north of me a few miles. Unfortunately, that’s where the birds had been sighted. The sun beat upon my back as I trudged through the farm field for a better view of the small valley below me.

With the Kites nowhere in sight, I turned my attention to the cumulonimbus clouds moving rapidly northeast. The late afternoon sun brightly illuminated them. Shortly after taking this photo, the National Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for those in the path of the storm.

That’s the way of bird watching. You go in search of one thing, and end up photographing something entirely different, but equally inspiring.