‘Rain Bomb’ Captured by Airport Cam

Microbursts are intense small-scale downdrafts that can dump a huge amount of rain on a small area in a short period of time. From a distance, the phenomenon looks like a pillar of water crashing down on the Earth. In Arizona, an airport security camera just captured one of these “rain bombs.”

Royal Norman, the meteorologist at Channel 3 in Phoenix, shared this 26-second video that was captured by a camera at Sedona Airport in the middle of Arizona.

Playing back at 8x actual speed, the timelapse shows a wet microburst reaching down to the ground starting at about 7 seconds in.