SkyPix

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

Unwelcomed Greeting

By

Imagine being a guest at a hotel, finally sleeping soundly after the noisy storm that rolled past during the previous night, then going outside in the morning to find this scene where your car's back window had been.   Wind-driven, two-inch hailstones commonly broke back and side automotive windows in this area of town, at a much higher rate than front windshields, which are composed of stronger … [Read more...]

Third Warm-Frontal Tornado

By

[Part 3 of 3]  Though not the last one (this supercell would spawn two or three more tornadoes after a substantial time gap and major evolution in the storm), this was the final, closest and shortest-lived tornado of a closely associated, three-vortex episode that occurred when the storm initially interacted with a warm-frontal zone.  It developed in a separate area of the elongated updraft base … [Read more...]

Second Warm-Frontal Tornado

By

[Part 2 of 3]  The second of three quick-succession tornadoes produced by this warm-frontal supercell started three minutes after the demise of the first, in the same mesocyclone, but with an obvious gap in space and time.  Here shown at its most robust, mature stage, it exhibited evidence of vortex sheathing (inner and outer vortex tubes).  The low cloud base made these tornadoes look bigger than … [Read more...]

Warm-Frontal Multivortex

By

[Part 1 of 3] Shivering in howling easterlies with a measured temperature of 61 degrees F, this is not normally the scene that would come to mind:  the bowl-shaped condensation funnel of a mature tornado, with sporadic subvortices swirling beneath.  Yet there we were, and that it was.  The parent supercell was the "Tail-End Charlie" of three that formed south of a warm front in the Dalhart, TX to … [Read more...]

Sky Feast at the Weather Center

By

Wild sunset skies greeted us on the back side of an extensive thunderstorm complex, as filaments of "anvil crawler" lightning sliced through the trailing precipitation region.  All of this, amidst one of those wondrous "red rainbow" sunsets, made for a festival of fascinating weather elements in the sky, for that brief break of time when I could step out to behold and appreciate. Norman OK (27 … [Read more...]

Rotation, Rotation, Rotation

By

Representing spin at many scales, this west-central Texas scene contains a striking, broadly rotating supercell, with classically striated cloud skirt and deep updraft towers tilted to the upper right.  Below that, a wall cloud rapidly spun, and its conical tornado, much faster still.  Meanwhile, wind turbines whirled uninhibited in the inflow region of this storm, which passed just a few miles to … [Read more...]