SkyPix

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

Electrified Squall Line

By

There is a lot happening in this seemingly innocuous night lightning slide:  an overshooting top lit from within, silhouetted smoke from a lightning-started fire (at bottom left), precip cores glowing from frequent lightning within, and the loopy cloud-to-cloud strike at lower right. This was one segment of a squall line which was sparking almost continuously from the northeast to the … [Read more...]

Red-Lined Whale’s Mouth

By

A couple minutes after the setting sun first splashed red-orange rays across the bottom inner rim of a large arcus cloud, or "whale's mouth", its final paintbrush feat made even more deeply textured, redder patches, before vanishing entirely.  The dense storm cores were west and northwest of the lit section of the arcus, with the sun setting in the southwestern late-November sky. Such a geometry … [Read more...]

Sunset Arcus Texture

By

This marvelously developed and turbulently constructed formation, an underside of an arcus cloud that first moved over me west of Bridgeport, surged eastward ahead of its fast-moving storm cluster.  That compelled quick transit to a known high spot on the west side of the Canadian River Valley in hope of good light.  Right as the sun set from my vantage, and for just a couple minutes, it lit up … [Read more...]

Wind Farm in Whale’s Mouth

By

Outflow from a severe storm hoisted a turbulent arcus cloud's underbelly into a classical "whale's mouth" formation, ironically sending a potent current of wind through turbines that were braked for unknown reasons.  Had they been functional, this would have chipped a bit of juice into the Oklahoma power grid.  I've seen unbraked turbines generating power in other thunderstorms⁠—even in a … [Read more...]

Leaf Slider

By

The fall 2020 ice storm didn't produce large amounts, but instead, caused its havoc by loading small thicknesses on still-leafed, often still-green trees, such as this.  The net effect was the same as four times the ice load, or more, during true winter.  Here, a crazy variant of ice accumulation occurred when the initial covering of the leaf slid nearly all the way off, but stopped, having been … [Read more...]

Twin Mesocyclones

By

Two rotating wall clouds revealed twin low-level mesocyclones on the southwest side of a classic, cyclic supercell. The broad one to the left had been rotating, sometimes rapidly, for nearly an hour (without producing any known tornadoes).  The one on the right formed on a storm-scale occlusion triple-point northeast of the original; it lasted another 30-45 minutes and yielded only a funnel.  That … [Read more...]