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smithsonianmag:

This Is What a Huge, Rotating Supercell Looks Like

By Marina Koren

On June 2, Phoenix-based photographer Mike Olbinski was shooting a wedding. The day after, he was speeding through hail and heavy rains from Denver down to the Texas panhandle, a hotbed for tornadoes.

It was there, near the border of Texas and Oklahoma, that Olbinski came upon a massive supercell slowly spinning over the flat landscape.

“It was probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed,” says Olbinski, who’s been chasing storms in the Central Plains since 2010. “It just looked like an alien spacecraft.”

Using a Canon 5D Mark II, Olbinski tracked the monster cloud’s movement for 24 minutes. The first three sections of the video are a composite of 878 shots, and the last clip consists of 93. The supercell looks a lot farther away from Olbinski in the video than it actually was, he says, thanks to a wide Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens.

“Once I got my camera set up and was able to sit back and watch it for a second, I got teary-eyed and hugged my buddy,” Olbinski says. His storm chasing partner, Andy Hoeland, had been convinced the pair would find a good storm in the area that day.

A supercell is a rare type of thunderstorm with a mesocyclone, a deep rotating updraft that sucks up rain, dust and other particles into a vertical column, much like a vacuum cleaner.

In the beginning of the clip, raindrops can be seen being sucked into the swirling supercell. Next, dust from the cornfield below is pulled into the cloud. Eventually, lightning streaks across the darkening sky, briefly coloring it with blues and purples.

Breathtaking

Global Hit: Omar Sosa & Paolo Fresu from PRI’s The World on Vimeo.

From PRI’s The World, theworld.org: The Cuban-Sardinian jazz duo, Omar Sosa and Paolo Fresu, perform “Alma” and “S’Inguldu,” two songs off their latest album entitled “Alma,” which means “soul.” They speak to The World’s Marco Werman about sharing similar musical styles, despite the geographic distance between their homelands.

Shivkumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain from PRI’s The World on Vimeo.

From PRI’s The World, theworld.org: Shivkumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain are masters of north Indian classical music. Sharma plays the santoor, a stringed instrument that originated in the Kashmir Valley, and Hussain plays the tabla, a percussion instrument. When collaborating, Sharma’s melodic sounds mix with Hussain’s powerful rhythms.

In this video, watch interviews with the musicians and a soundcheck before their March 2013 show at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, presented by World Music/CRASHarts.

Video by The World’s Sonia Narang.

areboursradio:

Ma capsule du jour porte sur Mathias Rust, un jeune Allemand qui fît atterrir son Cesna sur la place Rouge en 1987. Le Air Space Magazine a retracé en 2005 son trajet ainsi que la suite de coïncidences qui ont rendu possible cet exploit.

Ronald Reagan was president, there was still a Soviet Union, and a 19-year-old pilot set out to change the world.

Beau complément à cette chouette capsule diffusée à la Première Chaîne et offerte en balado.