SkyPix

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

Glacial Wall

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Small ice floes littered Glacier Bay below the imposing bulk of Margerie Glacier.  This steady (not retreating nor advancing in the net) ice mass flows just 21 miles off 12,860-foot Mt. Root.  The visible height of these ice cliffs was about 250 feet, with another 100 feet of underwater ice bringing the total waterfront glacial depth to 350 feet.  This is a renowned area for watching big … [Read more...]

Knobby Severe Hailstones

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An old, well-worn drafting ruler from high school—not very long for the world—measured knobby and/or wrinkly hailstones that fell from the hook of the infamous Tushka supercell, in the town of Milburn.  The variety of evident formative and cumulative processes for hailstones landing on the same patch of ground can be fascinating!  It's obvious, for example, that the lower right piece, with its … [Read more...]

Blown Dune Top

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Whether from water or wind, this is how sand ridges and dunes form and shift:  fluid flow across them.  Here in the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado, eolian sand from the upper Rio Grande, in the San Luis Valley, has accumulated against the Sangre de Cristos and formed massive dunes amidst the prevailing southwesterlies.  However, in this case, northeast outflow winds from earlier mountain … [Read more...]

Jekyll Island Beach

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Driven there on a much-higher wave and water-level combination than anything recent to the photo, a log rests bleached and dried and high off the tide, on Jekyll Island's beaches wide.  Wind and water alike shape these dunes, where not stabilized by salt-tolerant plants. Jekyll Island GA (31 Oct 8) Looking NE 31.-0553, -81.4069 … [Read more...]

Carved and Caved

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Water is mightier than rock, liquid the victor over solid.  Spectacular tidal caves illustrate that idea well at Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point in the continental U.S.  Pacific waves mighty and minuscule, one at a time over hundreds of thousands of years, have rasped gaping chambers deep into the seaside cliffs.  The water's work won't be done until this entire shoreline is beaten into … [Read more...]

Glowing Embers

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A short exposure and long zoom captured the hot glow of wooden embers, burning onward deep into the night, long after a pile of cedar limbs and twigs had been lit aflame.  I had stood staring for several prior minutes, transfixed at the flickering convulsions of incandescence, before realizing this would make a very uncommon photograph. Norman OK (9 Feb 8) Looking down … [Read more...]