SkyPix

A digital photographic storybook of clouds, weather and water by Roger Edwards.

Malay Thai Pyrocumulus

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This humble aerial peek into a hazy tropical boundary layer offers a ton of meteorology to ponder.  Flying northward over the western Gulf of Thailand, the westernmost arm of the Pacific, the first thing attracting attention could be the plume of smoke and cumuliform cloud material, shearing northward from a fire just inland from the east coast of the Malay Peninsula.  The pyro plume somewhat … [Read more...]

Summit Sunrise

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Sometimes, sleep trouble turns beneficial.  For the second time this cool season, I was awake unexpectedly early at a conference hotel, witnessing something seldom seen in my normal circadian skew:  sunrise.  It was a grand one, too, and a blessing to behold.  What a splendid way to kick off the National Storm Chaser Summit, at which I was a speaker this year! Overland Park KS (14 Feb 25) Looking … [Read more...]

Dense Core past Turbines

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Shortly before evolving into a supercell, a multicell storm dumped several heavy cores of rain (and probably hail) on parts of northeastern Colorado near Sterling.  From this vantage, near Fleming, one particularly dense core plunged earthward behind two wind turbines that framed it nicely.  These wind turbines on the Great Plains can be quite the unnatural eyesore at times, aside from the birds … [Read more...]

Storm-Scale Recycling

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High-based and entirely nontornadic through its life cycle, a northeastern Colorado supercell nonetheless made things interesting a few times as it cycled through relatively vigorous, low-level mesocyclone phases, with low wall clouds.  Rotation was slow, with much faster upward motion in each case.  This was the nearest to ground of the wall clouds, when including a pronounced boot of … [Read more...]

Career Sunset, New Beginning

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1 Jan 25 was my first day of retirement, after 35 years (minus two weeks) of continual rotating shifts as a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, and the Storm Prediction Center, now in the National Weather Center in Norman.  Before all that, while a student at OU, I spent over four years as a part-time federal research … [Read more...]