SkyPix

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

Hail Machine’s Hail

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A severe, heavy-precipitation supercell, of the type storm chasers and spotters often nickname an "HP Hail Machine", dumped a large quantity of significant severe hail west and south of Faith, SD.  From north of Faith, I went south of town and chose that viewing perspective, since the storm already was closing in on the west option.  After it passed off into a relative road void, I broke off to … [Read more...]

HP Hail Machine

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Experienced storm observers shall take one look at this scene and understand, foremost, that there's probably a lot of hail in there.  Indeed this was a hail factory, the grayish-white mass of rear-flank precipitation surging southeast behind and under that ragged shelf cloud, that core reflecting nearly as much light back to the observer as the cloud itself.  The arcus formed nearly a vertical … [Read more...]

Glaciation

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Here is the moment when deep towering cumulus (containing cumulus congestus) turns to cumulonimbus: the ice-crystal development known as glaciation.  Sometimes, as here, glaciation occurs when the towers penetrate into pileus clouds that have developed at what will become anvil level.  Within minutes, the icy anvil was fully developed and spreading downshear, away from this vantage.  Periodic … [Read more...]

Scud before Congestus

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Fleeting and small, the flimsiest shreds of scuddy fractocumulus cloud material drift darkly in front of the face of a powerful bomb of atmospheric energy release, in the form of cumumlus congestus clouds.  Why was the scud so dark, the convection so bright?  The answer is in differential lighting.  The scud was closer and lower in the sky, in the shadow of some other clouds behind our backs.  The … [Read more...]

Road to Pyrocumulus

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This cumulus formed atop a smoke plume from a small range fire, about 5 miles behind a diffuse dryline.  Still, whether from the pyroconvective plume or the entrainment environment, there was enough moisture to condense cloud material. 4 NW Hardesty OK (24 Apr 94) Looking WNW 36.6513, -101.2258 … [Read more...]

Tails of the Night

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This marvelous August "Tail-end Charlie" supercell had well-developed tail clouds in its brief daylight and twilight stages, largely lost the forward-flank tail for a spell while still spitting vault lightning, then regained numerous tails here.  Yes, that probably sets the record for number of uses of the word "tail" in a single sentence in SkyPix. 2 N Ordway CO (4 Aug 20) Looking NNW 38.2559, … [Read more...]