I created this site for weather enthusiasts in search of more aesthetic accounts and images of big weather.

So much of stormchasing is couched in important technical jargon (you can't get there without some physics). But after we are there, a sense of awe overtakes many of us. We are mesmerized by the terrible beauty of a storm, or humbled by the towering hugeness of the skies thrown out over us. This site is dedicated to the more artful appeal of big weather.

In the Gallery, you'll find images rendered and photographed.

In Writings, you'll find storm-related prose and poetry. In Stormings, weather-related potpourri.

In The Wry Sky, you'll find oddball humor. I call it "the tropopause that refreshes..."

I am Jim (Dryliner) Williams, a graphic designer and fine artist (bronze sculpture, works on paper, painting) out of Southern California. I was raised in Michigan where big weather can happen. I moved out to "weather-lite" Southern California in 1970. After a few storm-oriented side trips to the Plains during vacations in the late 80's and early 90's, and yearly late-summer forays into the monsoons of Arizona, I felt ready enough to enter the front doors of weather stations in 1994. Since then, I've been an annual visitor to the Alley, having made good friends, waiting in line for our gas station burritos.

I travel with sketchpads, watercolors, video and still cameras. Graupel can wreak havok on a watercolor sketch and straight line wind can send an easel and canvas off on a tri-county trip, so I work off of photos or sketches made at the scene.

Feel free to send interesting weather images, reflections or accounts you want to share. Remember, this is not so much a science-oriented site, as a place where we can all share in the awe and sometimes other-worldliness of big weather.

Storm artists, poets, where are you? Email me at dryliner@aol.com

Dryline Defined: A boundary separating moist air to the east from dry air to the west. It usually is oriented north/south and occurs in the central and southern high plains during the spring and early summer.
– Storm Talk © 1995 Tim Marshall