The satellite and radar images coming out of Tuesday's severe weather is approaching "map porn" caliber for weather geeks. The top of this post features a high-resolution satellite image of the central United States, showing severe thunderstorms over Iowa and Illinois, as well as a stubborn and intense supercell near Denver, Colorado.

The tops of the storms have anvils so cold that they just show up as black blobs on infrared satellite imagery.

The storm east of Denver has been hanging on for the past couple of hours as it essentially follows I-70 out of the city towards unpopulated areas of Colorado. At around 5:30PM Mountain Time, there was so much hail falling out of the storm near Deer Trail, CO that the reflectivity was maxed out.

So much hail fell in Aurora, in fact, that it covered the ground like snow.

Meanwhile back in Illinois, a storm south of Rockford looked mighty pretty (and mighty ugly) on 3-D radar. This storm was responsible for producing hail between 0.50 and 0.75 inches in diameter.

More storms are expected on Wednesday further east across the Ohio Valley.

[Images via GOES and Gibson Ridge]