Big West African supercell from space

[Jody Radzik]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1202973/Pictured-Spaceship-shaped-cloud-hovering-Earth-captured-astronauts.html

[Chris Kennedy]

Nice find, that thing is huge

[Jody Radzik]

I bet there was some really good mammatus under that anvil.

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Impressive stuff ... 75,000 foot tops, like I mentioned in another thread, are possible over the tropics due to the higher tropopause.

Also interesting is the dusty SAL (Saharan Air Layer) - The low-level haze you see if you look at the lower clouds (poking through the haze layer) in the lower portions of the picture.

[Ryan Wichman]

I saw that picture this morning. Pretty weak sauce. I don't chase anything under 80,000 feet.

[Mike Deep]

That is a rather old picture, IIRC. Daily Mail loves to dig up old pictures and write articles about them as if they're new - Usually without doing much research beyond paraphrasing a Wikipedia article on the subject. They usually game Digg with these as well.

Here we go: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lbf/?n=iss_thunderstorm

[Jeff Duda]

The picture may be old, but it sure is COOL!

[David Drummond]

Cool pic. Gotta love this part though:

"A giant, anvil-shaped cloud bubbles up towards the Earth's stratosphere, looming over West Africa.

The amazing formation would be invisible to anyone on the ground and would even be obscure from a regular passenger jet since they can reach up to 75,000ft. "

Invisible to anyone on the ground? I could swear backsheared anvils and overshooting top identification was part of storm spotter training everywhere.

[Jared Farrer]

I am not sure they are saying this cumulonimbi is 75,000 feet, I think they are saying they can reach as tall as that which in the tropics of course they can due to the taller tropopause.

I cant tell you how tall it is without looking at a sounding. But you can see a towering cu right beside it punching up through the anvil. Given its summer for the northern hem, it probably is 70,000 or so tall!

Amazing picture, I wish we had more of those. I wish we had more supercells shot from this angle! LOL.

[L.B. LaForce]

I saw that picture this morning. Pretty weak sauce. I don't chase anything under 80,000 feet.
LOL..that is it quite an amazing shot I must say. Nice find!

[jladue]

This is a nice picture but I don't think the convection is overly impressive compared to what we usually consider chaseworthy. In fact, most likely this storm was not rotating. It may have had a nice upwind anvil but if the wind at anvil level wasn't strong then it wouldn't have taken much of an updraft to generate that kind of upwind growth.

[Joe beier]

That shot is pure amazingness ... brb buying a spaceship