SkyPix

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

Mammatus Sunrise

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Instead of a "tequila sunrise", this was a mammatus sunrise!  I see far less mammatus at sunrise than sunset, for two reasons: 1.  Vigorous supercells and other storm complexes capable of generating mammatus are less common at this time of the morning, when low-level instability is near daily minimum, and 2.  I'm seldom awake and at home at this time of day. An intervening cloud streak deck … [Read more...]

Damaging Transition

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Trailing mostly behind the outflow of a large supercell that I never quite could catch, this storm caught my eye with a low wall cloud visible in the distance from several miles west of here.  So I followed this storm for a bit as it moved southeastward toward the Mississippi River and the Missouri/Illinois border.  This supercell looked ominous at times, and occasionally showed moderate … [Read more...]

Permian Basin EF3

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This classical view shows a partly rain-wrapped (but still quite visible) tornado, throwing a broad dust and debris fan, beneath a deep occlusion-downdraft cut and tilted mesocyclonic updraft.  A wide-angle shot reveals the amazing storm structure above and beyond the immediate tornado area.  Dust from the otherwise parched landscape filled parts of the inflow region at right.  This was the last … [Read more...]

Electric Road

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A supercell, that I had been tracking for much of the late afternoon and evening, merged into a larger, growing area of thunderstorms in increasingly hilly and wooded terrain of northeastern Oklahoma, so it was time to call it a chase  day and let the activity recede off into the eastern yonder.  On their way away, the storms emerged from an earlier cloak of low clouds to fling a variety of … [Read more...]

I-94 Muncher Part 3

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[Part 3 of 3]  Limping awkwardly back across the overpass, in order to get in my vehicle and book it on down the road before this storm engulfed the spot, I noticed this well-placed DO NOT ENTER sign adorning the wrong-way side of the I-94 off-ramp.  Here, it had double meaning, for one would be highly unwise to either enter the freeway this way, or the storm from any direction.  I could afford 15 … [Read more...]

I-94 Muncher Part 2

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[Part 2 of 3]  Based on the orientation of the I-94 storm's onrushing shelf cloud, I thought I could get a complementary curve in the foreground with the wet entrance ramp on the north side, and indeed, hobbled over the bridge barely in time to do so.  Hobbled?  Yes, unfortunately, thanks to a painful, pulled calf muscle suffered a couple days before, while slipping on some mud in Chadron, NE.  … [Read more...]