SkyPix

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

Sunrise Tree: Fall 2021

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The opening Sunrise Tree scene for the cool season of 2021–22 arrived with leaves afloat on the pond, some still in the trees.  The woods silhouetted a sunrise cloudscape textured with subtlety and not sharpness, where a large, fuzzy swath of variably thin cirrus caught first light and luxuriantly dappled the sky.  It was a moment evoking gratitude for its very presence, and for life as a whole, … [Read more...]

Frontal Arcus, Part 2

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[Part 2 of 2]  As the frontal arcus approached, of course it dominated more of the sky, flushing birds from their morning lair.  Wind shift from southwesterly to northwesterly would arrive within less than a minute.   The fundamental processes making this arcus are the same as a thunderstorm gust front, but for the source of the cold air:  a synoptic cyclone instead of mesoscale to local-scale … [Read more...]

Frontal Arcus, Part 1

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[Part 1 of 2] On a humid late-autumn morning, a seemingly ordinary cold front made quite the spectacle of itself!  This was one of the most impressive non-thunderstorm shelf clouds I’ve seen:  front-lit by a southeastern sun, set beneath wispy cirrus, and above a rolling landscape of semi-rural acreage carpeted by the autumnal fawn and dun of dormant grass.  Surface heating and vertical mixing … [Read more...]

Crater from Giant Hail

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This is what a 4+ inch hailstone does to the windshield of a Ford Crown Victoria.  Quite the impressive crater, no?  This was not our desired outcome.  Give the predicament, however, it was a known risk.  The evening before, south of I-40 on a northbound eastern Panhandle road, we found ourselves triangulated in the twilight between a tornado to the immediate southwest, another tornado a few miles … [Read more...]

Dying Twilight Tornado in Rain

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After several years of ignoring it due to the low-light noisiness of my first DSLR, I finally decided to post this image and its story.  The parent HP supercell had put on a nice structural show for us in the Oklahoma Panhandle, before becoming even more deeply rain-wrapped as it eased east-southeastward into deepening twilight.  We honestly did not expect to dig out a tornado after it looked so … [Read more...]

Autumnal Okie Sundown

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These famously colorful central Oklahoma sunsets are a marvel to behold year-round.  Still, the long-lasting ones of late fall seem to be the most deeply immersive for the observer, when the sun sets at a steep angle and colors linger long enough for cloud forms to evolve noticeably through the tonal progression.  Even for a sunset here, this peak-phase show was exceptionally brilliant and fluidly … [Read more...]