SkyPix

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

High-Based Wall Cloud and Forward-Flank Core

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Though high-based, with only weak visible rotation, this supercell had a large updraft, visible from many miles away, and deserved closer scrutiny.  A quick jaunt NNW out of Roll provided such an opportunity, albeit short-lived.  Focal length here was 50 mm, shooting 35-mm Ektachrome slides; so yes, it was close, but not dangerously so.  After dropping back south to get out of the way of both the … [Read more...]

Window Dressing

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Consequences of forgetting my usual vehicular tarp in a night-shift freezing-rain event included this one, for which I'm now glad, thanks to the incidentally abstract artistry.  All that was necessary was to heat up the interior for a few minutes and roll down the window partly, with no significant frictional resistance, thanks to a thin melting layer that formed on the inside of the ice.  Once … [Read more...]

Blast in the Dark

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Numerous lightning flashes punctuated the sky in the middle to far distance on this eventful evening, most of which illuminated some cloud material or thin shafts of anvil precip between us and the main storm core.  I probably shot two dozen slides of those strikes, mostly of dissatisfying quality due to either distance, or the lack of any evidence of foreground, given the utter dearth of … [Read more...]

Colorful Mare’s Tails

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On this day after a deeply disputed election, chaos, uncertainty and sociopolitical tumult precipitated in the news all around.  I welcomed and preferred this form of precipitation instead:  long thick streamers of snow virga in the upper troposphere, falling from cirrus clouds into brilliant sunset light, forming uncinus, long known as "mare's tails". Norman OK (4 Nov 20) Looking S … [Read more...]

Yellow Rose Froze

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This isn't the yellow rose of Texas, because it was frozen on the bush in an Oklahoma flower bed.  The late-October 2020 ice storm brought winter weather to autumn, encasing green leaves and remaining warm-season flowers in ice, in what already was one of the strangest years in state and national history in many respects.   This scene symbolizes that notion. Norman OK (27 Oct 20) Looking NNE … [Read more...]

Nearby Forked CG

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Messing with my newly acquired Pentax slide camera, out an open window, as a passenger in a moving vehicle (hence the blurred foreground), I don't even recall why I was aiming this way, much less shooting.  It certainly wasn't out of foreknowledge of this:  an eye-blistering, eardrum-throttling lightning strike about 100 yards away, in the row of short trees extending along the background.  Every … [Read more...]