SkyPix

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

Sun-Splashed Bentonite Beds

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Water made this formation, and water breaks it up in two ways.  This is part of a great deal of poorly consolidated Paleocene bentonite clay, in between thick layers and thin lenses of sandstone and siltstone.   The gray clay, which takes on a popcorn-like texture when dry, was derived from volcanic ash that settled through shallow water.  Bentonite swells and shrinks dramatically, depending on … [Read more...]

Storm Towers over Pawnee National Grassland

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Few places on the Great Plains can compete with the Pawnee National Grassland for offering a serene, uncluttered natural setting from which to observe beautiful clouds and storms.  This brilliantly illuminated, multicellular cumulonimbus continue to build at the tail end of a cluster of storms that soaked the higher ground to the north, and offered a different sort of "scenic" view with a wind … [Read more...]

Sunny Rain on Canna

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A small summer shower in the sunshine deposited raindrops on both side of a canna leaf.  Indeed, light rain still was falling at the time of this photo.  The result was a magical prismatic sprinkling of shimmering sparkles and shadows, set on the symmetry of a large leaf.  I'm not sure any other SkyPix image ever has, not will, compete with this for greenness. Norman OK (17 Jul 13) Looking ESE … [Read more...]

Ledges: Horizontal

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[Part 2 of 2]  This peek at Palette Spring has some of the same travertine terraces as the vertical view, but also, different ones to either side.  The spring has its name for a good reason: many tones on the color scale inhabit the deposits, created both by other minerals besides the dominant calcium carbonate, and by algae and bacteria living in (and spilling out from) the thermal pools.  … [Read more...]

Ledges: Vertical

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[Part 1 of 2]  The travertine terraces of Yellowstone's Palette Spring, part of Mammoth Hot Springs, reveal an exquisitely intricate, ever-evolving, fluid sculpture made solid by liquid, and in the process, constructing some of the most fascinating patterns in nature.   Calcium carbonate, dissolved in the hot spring water, continually forms a solid at the surface as the water cools and … [Read more...]

Outflow Light, Part 2

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[Part 2 of 2] As the shelf cloud and its deep outflow pool surged past my High Plains promontory, unbroken exposure to the cold winds couldn't take away from fuller appreciation of the subtle, yet wondrous, western-sky light being diffused onto the arcus' turbulent underbelly.  Soon, this complex would shoot of to the southeast, cast marvelous sunset mammatus across the northern sky, develop a … [Read more...]