SkyPix

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

Northwest Angle

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Here's an unconventional view of most of a supercell's updraft base and wall cloud (down the road):  from the outer northwest part of the storm, just inside its core.   This strange vantage was made possible by an unusually thin, translucent forward-flank core, likely the result of this storm's being weakened (but not quite killed) after a collision with a large gob of outflow from an unrelated … [Read more...]

Survivor Circulation

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The day after I left Norman for an eventful nontornadic storm and sunset day in central Nebraska, this one turned out even more so, in western South Dakota.   A massive supercellular hail machine, producing the largest hail in the nation that day, had roared away, leaving me to attempt an intercept of this supercell, which was near Rapid City at the time I targeted it.  Alas, a large yet … [Read more...]

Spencer Water Tower

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The commercial TV media beamed other images of this toppled water tower worldwide the day after the Spencer, SD tornado⁠—pictures that instantly became vivid symbols of a small, aging prairie town virtually obliterated in the span of a couple minutes.  Still, in the view behind the dramatic scene, there was some intriguing damage analysis and trajectory interpretation to be done.  On the left … [Read more...]

F4 Couldn’t Move Gloves

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The fire station at Spencer, SD, was anchored to its slab foundation with 1/4-inch bolts, before the tornado's southeast side popped the entire building bodily off the bolts and disintegrated it somewhere in midair.  I came to this conclusion because the sill plate was cleanly slipped up past the bolt heads (no washers) all around the foundation, and because large, mostly intact and partially … [Read more...]

Atmospheric Artistry Aloft

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This was an extension of the "No Ord-inary Sunset" scene into the sky straight overhead, a few minutes later, quite mesmerizing to behold.  The last minutes of sunshine illuminated most (but not all) of a complex, richly textured cloud extension thrusting westward from the backside of a thunderstorm cluster.  Various elements in this peculiar protuberance moved different directions, rolling and … [Read more...]

Overhead Expulsion

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As the last sunlight reddened and brilliantly illuminated its midsection, the richly colored and textured, upper-level cloud protuberance continued to thrust westward and directly overhead from a cluster of convection.  Gaps allowed blue-sky light to pass through, rendering a marvelously three-dimensional view for a two-dimensional photograph.  In its form, this narrowly focused, backshear … [Read more...]