SkyPix

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

Under Arcus

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The setting sun's warm-colored rays were filtered and softened by a thin rain core at right before being reflected, in turn, off the ragged base of the arcus cloud overhead.  The storm began as a high-based, weak supercell, then became "Tail-end Charlie" for a long squall line.  It saved its most stirring visual display for its dying, gusting-out phase, proving that outflow can be beautiful … [Read more...]

Chilling at the Lakeshore

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There's so much happening here!  For starters, the deepest arm of Lake Thunderbird, which would freeze over completely the very next day, still was warm enough to remain mostly liquid, wafting lake-effect vapors of cloud condensation into the sub-zero cold.  A mix of spray and cloud riming left ice coating these grasses and bushes, which wore skirts of ice deposited (and planed off at the bottom) … [Read more...]

White Is Red

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Multiple heavy-precipitation supercells rolled over Lubbock and vicinity the night before, with other storms dumping copious rains northward toward Plainview.  Those deluges all caused extensive and deep flooding that closed Interstate 27, along with several other highways and streets.  All that water had to drain somewhere, and a good bit of it roared off the Caprock into the White River, which … [Read more...]

Menacing Grand Island

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Rolling right down the central Plains' noted Lincoln Highway (US-30), this previously tornadic supercell had taken a long break from any serious attempts at more tornado action.  Then it produced a brief, faint "landspout" (nonmesocyclonic tornado) away from the main updraft area, followed by this low-hanging, fairly strongly rotating wall cloud.  The problem?  This reorganization was occurring … [Read more...]

Booms in the Night

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Late night, on the way home from a forecast shift, featured an elevated multicell storm cluster flashing furiously, hurling forked cloud-to-ground strokes across the semi-rural square miles of east Norman.  It was well worth the stop, not only to observe and photograph, but to listen.  Sound took many seconds to cross the miles, rendering anticipation after each flurry of flashes for the … [Read more...]

Supercell behind Bluebonnets

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Rarely does a North Texas HP Stormzilla shed much of its intense precipitation field and revert back to a more classical supercell form.  This one did, giving us a great backdrop to a little hillside field of bluebonnets, the state flower.  Intermittent, ragged wall clouds and areas of broad rotation appeared under the base, but never anything sufficiently tight or well-organized to give me cause … [Read more...]