SkyPix

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

Bueyeros Boom

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Several square inches of scrubby New Mexico earth scorched for less than a second.  That still was enough time to sterilize it of life, under around 30,000 amperes of direct current surging through that surface to illuminate the lightning channel.  This, of course, sent a nice, strong report of thunder rolling out across the shortgrass prairies.  These storms developed southward from earlier, also … [Read more...]

Electric Lasso over the Borderlands

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Though nothing special structurally, a mass of high-based, multicellular convection offered copious lightning between Tucson and Nogales.  Fortunately this electrical lasso roped only the sky, in true Ghost Riders fashion, instead of ensnaring anyone attempting to photograph it.  The storm also flung its fair share of cloud-to-ground lightning around these nearby mountains, and the scrubby desert … [Read more...]

Sunflower Spark

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An otherwise innocuous summer storm made itself known by hurling lightning across the highest part of the High Plains in northeastern New Mexico.  This part of the Land of Enchantment has been good to me for storm observing, despite the dearth of roads; indeed, nearly 13 months earlier, I shot a head-scratcher of a lightning strike looking a different direction, from just a few yards west of this … [Read more...]

Spreading Sparks

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Numerous cloud-to-ground (CG) strokes split the nighttime sky northeast of Clayton, from a slowly weakening multicell storm that had moved southeastward out of Colorado.  I shot over 50 with this storm alone, and here are two.  Quite possibly, the flash on the right struck soil of the Oklahoma Panhandle, while the one on the left almost certainly was in New Mexico.  Both show that, for lightning, … [Read more...]

Sierra Grande Shelf Cloud

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A weirdly shaped and colored shelf cloud surged out across the volcano-studded High Plains of northeastern New Mexico, heralding a rush of cooler air and rain across this shortgrass rangeland.  The combination of laminar, spaceship-like cloud-base formations and an odd beige tint with hints of pale mauve is uncommon in my storm-observing experience, but for similar sightings the very day before, … [Read more...]

Young Cumulonimbus

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Forget mountain-grown coffee.  I'll take a big cup of mountain-grown convection, please.  In the warm season, after the dryline has disappeared in favor of moisture from the North American Monsoon, "recycled" moisture advected upslope behind the passage of weak cold fronts, and/or or where a more direct fetch of Gulf air can back right up to the mountains, we see activity such as this often on the … [Read more...]