SkyPix

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

Sunny Rain on Canna

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A small summer shower in the sunshine deposited raindrops on both side of a canna leaf.  Indeed, light rain still was falling at the time of this photo.  The result was a magical prismatic sprinkling of shimmering sparkles and shadows, set on the symmetry of a large leaf.  I'm not sure any other SkyPix image ever has, not will, compete with this for greenness. Norman OK (17 Jul 13) Looking ESE … [Read more...]

Ledges: Horizontal

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[Part 2 of 2]  This peek at Palette Spring has some of the same travertine terraces as the vertical view, but also, different ones to either side.  The spring has its name for a good reason: many tones on the color scale inhabit the deposits, created both by other minerals besides the dominant calcium carbonate, and by algae and bacteria living in (and spilling out from) the thermal pools.  … [Read more...]

Ledges: Vertical

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[Part 1 of 2]  The travertine terraces of Yellowstone's Palette Spring, part of Mammoth Hot Springs, reveal an exquisitely intricate, ever-evolving, fluid sculpture made solid by liquid, and in the process, constructing some of the most fascinating patterns in nature.   Calcium carbonate, dissolved in the hot spring water, continually forms a solid at the surface as the water cools and … [Read more...]

Outflow Light, Part 2

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[Part 2 of 2] As the shelf cloud and its deep outflow pool surged past my High Plains promontory, unbroken exposure to the cold winds couldn't take away from fuller appreciation of the subtle, yet wondrous, western-sky light being diffused onto the arcus' turbulent underbelly.  Soon, this complex would shoot of to the southeast, cast marvelous sunset mammatus across the northern sky, develop a … [Read more...]

Outflow Light, Part 1

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[Part 1 of 2] Dark-sky, bright-ground scenes long have enthralled me, and this was no different.  A former supercell merged with an outflow-dominant cluster of storms that had formed in the Laramie Range, and the entire blended mass migrated southeastward onto the adjoining High Plains, unleashing a torrent of cold outflow in the process.  That normally would be a cue to head to the night's … [Read more...]

Frozen Zinnia

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The last flowers of summer didn't finish blooming before an early ice storm finished them off.   This one developed icicles more delicate than the flower.  Soon, ice and plants both would be gone. Zinnias are native to southwestern North America and parts of Central and South America, including a few Great Plains varieties.  They have been cultivated and bred worldwide for their bright variety of … [Read more...]