And now for something completely different ... Lunar eclipse June 15th 2011

Another bust for N-Italy today so instead of storm images, I'm offering you something completely different! Here are some images from the June 15th lunar eclipse that was spectacular! You might have already seen the images on the Facebook account. Probably the darkest lunar eclipse I have ever seen. Dusk light gave a spectacular background setting.

June 6th - Classic supercell south of Krško/Brežice

I saw a lot of potential for E-Slovenia today (see previous posts), but the morning GFS and WRF models put me in a bad mood because they were seriously downgrading deep layer shear to the point where I saw no potential anymore. Later on, it got a tad better. A potential storm formed south of Novo mesto, and I jumped on it because I knew it could get strong given the moderate CAPE and better shear values further north. I was north of the cell the whole time. I tried to get east of the cell to get a better look, but the cell was moving sharply right and the Gorjanci mountain range (about 1000m high) limited my movement. I would waste an hour to get on the other side. I was hoping the cell would get into the Krško-Brežice valley where the conditions could be very good. That did not happen, it tracked right over Gorjanci and tracked eastward and slightly to the north. I only got one good look at it because of bad road connetions and hills on the south side. And it was a pretty one. It didn't look good at first, only the inflow banding was giving me some hope. At some point I was already contemplating about returning home, but the view got better so I waited a while and got rewarded with a nice classic supercell with a "barber pole" updraft. The supercell never looked very good on the radar, but it had nice structure nevertheless. On the radar image below you can see a significantly stronger cell some ten kilometers to the north, but the terrain there is awful, not chasable at all. So the supercell south of Krško and Brežice was probably the storm of the day.

 I was desperate to get east of it, so I went as far as the Croatian border, but at that point the storm had already dissipated once I got a better look at it. No other significant storms were in the area later that day.

Here it already had a nice inflow, but I was way too far north
to see anything else. Here I'm racing eastward.

Very nice wall cloud. Later on, the rain hide the
structure so had to race eastward again, with no luck.

May 3rd 2011 - Storm with shelf cloud in SE-Slovenia

Another weak front passed us today. Only marginal CAPE with weak deep layer shear was present, but the front provided enough lift for some semi-serious storms to form. I got a nice view of a shallow shelf cloud in the vicinity of my home. It was really a multi-cellular mess. Only this storm showed some signs of organization, everything else was just not worth looking at. Some nearby cells really killed the action on the cell I photographed. It was soon digesting downdrafts from other cells and died soon after that.

Yeah, we've seen better but given that the season sucks so far and it's still early May, I'll take this one.

Wall cloud of the first cell of the day that did not produce anything.

Distant wall cloud.

Forming shelf cloud approaching.

Funky looking tornado-like structure. Nothing serious.

Probably the best look of the storm I got.

Wall cloud with the shelf above.

August 5th 2010 - Possible supercell near Novo Mesto

Got run over at home with a nice cell in the line. I liked the moist east wind on the ground before the storm. Veering was pretty good in combination with the jet from the south. A nice wall cloud. Could not really tell if the thing was rotating because it was too far away. Pretty dynamic. Higher CAPE would definitely help.

June 25th 2010 - Multicells near Novo Mesto

May 25th 2009 - Monster Ljubljana supercell

This was a supercell that really surprised us all. I didn't even went to chase, kinda got caught unprepared but I took some photos from my home in Novo mesto. This supercell dropped 6-7 cm hail in Ljubljana. I wanted to intercept it in Novo mesto but it kinda dryed out, so no specatular photos for me. My friend got a couple of fantastic photos of the mesocyclone in LJ. Check them HERE. Inflow easily seen more than 70 km far away.

It was more than 2000 J/kg CAPE that day with 20 m/s DLS but no low lever winds thus no veering and helicity so I did not expect such a supercell forming!

May 24th 2009 - Passing storm

May 3rd 2009 - Shelf cloud

Surprising shelf cloud from a really crappy storm. Conditions weren't good at all, so I was at home all the time, but this was quite surprising! Solid winds on the ground but nothing spectacular.