SkyPix

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

Rotating Interface

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[Part 2 of 3] As the southeast-moving HP supercell's path and mine converged, the shelf cloud structures cleared away enough so that I could more closely examine the structure along the inflow-outflow interface.  This ragged wall cloud—part of a mesocyclone at the northern apex of the storm's rear-flank gust front—was slowly rotating.  Meanwhile, hail over 2.5 inches in diameter pummeled the … [Read more...]

Happy Union HP

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[Part 1 of 3]  At first glance, this looks like a big, mean-looking shelf cloud belonging in the Gallery of Outflow.  But look closer at the structures in this 28-mm wide-angle shot.  Outflow at left and inflow at right are actually dancing a mesocyclonic tango.  The HP (heavy-precipitation) supercell's main precipitation core is at lower left (NNW), sending outflow eastward (from left to right) … [Read more...]

Cold-Core Funnel Part 3

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[Part 3 of 3]  How do we get supercells and funnel clouds (and in at least one case elsewhere this day, a brief tornado) when surface temperatures feel so cool (50s F)?  This isn't a so-called "cold-air" funnel", but instead, a fully supercellular circulation in the cold-core region of a midtropospheric cyclone.  It's not common in these parts, but when temperatures 10,000-20,000 feet up are … [Read more...]

Cold-Core Funnel Part 2

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[Part 2 of 3]  After barely failing to arrive in time for an earlier, brief tornado northwest of Nowata, I zigzagged southeast, looking at a couple other small, interesting but non-tornadic supercells along the way.  This one came this close to being a tornado, but despite observing very attentively from only about a mile away, I saw no evidence of a ground circulation strong enough to call it … [Read more...]

Cold-Core Funnel Part 1

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[Part 1 of 3]  A small but somewhat persistent funnel cloud formed at the tip of a triangular wall cloud. Conveniently, it developed right as I pulled over at this relative flatland clearing—which isn't easy to find in a forested, hilly part of northeastern Oklahoma that more resembles Alabama. Perhaps that's fitting, since a song by the band Alabama was playing on the radio as this funnel twisted … [Read more...]

Long Horizontal Filament

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The back end of a bow-echo- producing squall line roared past, leaving behind a trailing precipitation area that occasionally flung filaments and pulses of lightning for miles and miles, between one invisibly separated region of charge and a different one.  Elegantly simple, yet intricately complex, this discharge seemed to stretch from one horizon to another, up and down the north-south length of … [Read more...]