Kevin Palmer

  • Portfolio
  • Time Lapse
  • About
  • Archive
    • All Galleries
    • Search
    • Cart
    • Lightbox
    • Client Area
  • Links
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
x

Search Results

Refine Search
Match all words
Match any word
Prints
Personal Use
Royalty-Free
Rights-Managed
(leave unchecked to
search all images)
7 images found
twitterlinkedinfacebook

Loading ()...

  • During the most intense part of the geomagnetic storm, I looked straight up and this is what I saw. It's known as a corona, and it looks like the aurora is radiating outward from a single point in the sky. This was the first time I've seen a corona and it didn't last long.
    Aurora Corona
  • While the sun set behind clouds to the west, these anticrepuscular rays were shining to the east over Sheridan. They appear to converge at the anti-solar point directly opposite the sun and the rays are actually parallel even though they don't look like it.
    Anticrepuscular Rays
  • Every tidal cycle brought something different. An endless stream of icebergs floated down the fjord, stranding themselves in this small bay when the tide turned.  Earlier that morning there were so many pieces of ice that I couldn’t even walk across this beach. But by nightfall most were carried away and only a few remained. It was my last night in Nuuk and the forecast called for 80% clouds. I just had to wait for that 20% gap. Geomagnetic activity wasn’t particularly high either, but this far north it doesn’t take much. Greenland is located under the auroral oval, where shows like this may happen any time the sky is clear and dark enough. When fringes of purple or pink line the swirls of aurora, it’s often associated with bright, rapid movement. A still image doesn't even begin to show all that's happening in the sky. Rays of light pulse inward from every direction, converging overhead at the zenith. It’s mesmerizing to watch and hard to look away from, though part of me wished I had a second camera with me to capture it all.
    Energetic Swirls
  • This 7600' summit has no name and there is no trail leading here. It wasn't a long climb. But it did involve descending into a valley and fording a cold river, before scrambling straight up a steep slope. Enough snow has melted that I was able to avoid most of it. At the summit this was the view that awaited me looking east. Holes in the cloud cover let through small patches of sunlight. The light beams are an optical phenomena known as anticrepuscular rays. The shafts of light are actually parallel, but appear to converge at the antisolar point, which is 180° opposite the sun. The rays only seem to converge because of a perspective effect, similar to railroad tracks in the distance.
    Anticrepuscular Rays
  • After an auroral substorm, a corona formed at the zenith. A corona is a very fast moving type of aurora, where the rays appear to converge. But by the time I finished a time lapse and pointed my camera straight up, most of it was gone.
    At the Zenith
  • I spent Memorial Day chasing storms across the Colorado High Plains. Colorado may not be the first state people think of when it comes to tornadoes. But it actually sees more than 50 a year on average, mostly in the eastern third of the state. Upslope flow causes storms to fire when moist southeasterly winds encounter the Rockies. The Palmer Divide is a ridge east of the Front Range and it creates what's known as the Denver Convergence Vorticity Zone. The changing winds in the DCVZ generates extra spin which makes storms rotate. But many of the tornadoes are weak and short-lived, at least they were on this day. Of the 3 possible twisters I saw, none of them were very clear. This was taken near Holyoke when swirling dust appeared underneath a funnel.
    Holyoke Tornado
  • Paved roads were few and far between. Cell phone signal was non-existent. Hills and bluffs sometimes blocked the view. Mosquitoes swarmed around me and stubborn cows formed a roadblock. These are some of the challenges of chasing storms in Montana. Elsewhere crowds of storm chasers may converge on a supercell. But here it’s not uncommon to be the only one on a storm, and I feel an extra responsibility to report what I see to the National Weather Service. When everything comes together just right the supercells here can be truly incredible. This storm first went up over the Crazy Mountains before tracking east along the Musselshell River, into a part of Big Sky Country I’d never been. It was one of the roundest, most obviously rotating supercells I've ever seen. Evening sunlight snuck in underneath to turn the hail shaft gold. Just when the storm was at its most photogenic I came upon this scene of an abandoned house on the open prairie. It was exactly what I was looking for.
    Melstone Supercell