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Swallowing Mountains Whole

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The air felt heavy and still. As it rotated closer, this supercell seemed to grow wings. Within a couple of minutes Sundance Mountain was swallowed up by the precipation core. The 'calm before the storm' does not happen with every storm, but when it does it's very noticeable. Then a giant bolt of lightning struck out of frame, with a deafening thunder shattering the silence. An errant hailstone, big enough to leave a bruise, bounced off of the ground with a thud. It was time to move. This cell turned out to be an ice machine, piling up baseball-sized hail on the road, and making the temperature plummet which created hail fog. Chasing storms in and around the Black Hills has it's challenges. Winding roads through hilly terrain makes viewpoints limited and cell signal sporadic. But when everything comes together just right, the structure and color of the storms around here are incredible.

Copyright
Kevin Palmer
Image Size
5275x3521 / 5.3MB
Keywords
Contained in galleries
Recent Work, Wyoming, Storms
The air felt heavy and still. As it rotated closer, this supercell seemed to grow wings. Within a couple of minutes Sundance Mountain was swallowed up by the precipation core. The 'calm before the storm' does not happen with every storm, but when it does it's very noticeable. Then a giant bolt of lightning struck out of frame, with a deafening thunder shattering the silence. An errant hailstone, big enough to leave a bruise, bounced off of the ground with a thud. It was time to move. This cell turned out to be an ice machine, piling up baseball-sized hail on the road, and making the temperature plummet which created hail fog. Chasing storms in and around the Black Hills has it's challenges. Winding roads through hilly terrain makes viewpoints limited and cell signal sporadic. But when everything comes together just right, the structure and color of the storms around here are incredible.