SkyPix

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

Smooth Removal

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Before doing marginal F4 damage in town, the Spencer tornado moved from right center to left center, leaving behind a concrete-block foundation with house debris in the basement.  No anchoring is evident; note the smoothness of the top of the hollow concrete blocks.  In fact, every house on this survey which was removed from its foundation was either not anchored down at all, or weakly connected … [Read more...]

Stormy Badlands Evening

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After a supercell I had observed merged with a growing cluster of convection to it east, the entire complex backbuilt, then ran away over the Badlands and into the twilight, leaving behind a beautifully chaotic, blue-hour sky with an occasional flicker of lightning for good measure.  This would become my camping spot for the night, filling interludes of sleeplessness with filtered to full light … [Read more...]

Slider

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In damage-survey parlance, a "slider" isn't a miniature hamburger, but a structure (usually house) that slides off its foundation cleanly, and largely in one piece.  Before plowing through Spencer, the infamous 1998 tornado shoved this wood-frame house bodily off its concrete-block foundation, toward the east-southeast, in the southern portion of the damage path.  Note a lack of evidence of any … [Read more...]

Shielded Mobile Home

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Why would a significant tornado only strip the front end and part of the roof off this mobile home, while leaving it basically in place?  The mobile home was not your usual, unanchored, free-flying wind toy.  It had been secured into concrete footings, using steel cables and ties.  Meanwhile, the unanchored house to the left was pushed almost completely off its foundation, as shown in the previous … [Read more...]

Northwest Angle

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Here's an unconventional view of most of a supercell's updraft base and wall cloud (down the road):  from the outer northwest part of the storm, just inside its core.   This strange vantage was made possible by an unusually thin, translucent forward-flank core, likely the result of this storm's being weakened (but not quite killed) after a collision with a large gob of outflow from an unrelated … [Read more...]

Survivor Circulation

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The day after I left Norman for an eventful nontornadic storm and sunset day in central Nebraska, this one turned out even more so, in western South Dakota.   A massive supercellular hail machine, producing the largest hail in the nation that day, had roared away, leaving me to attempt an intercept of this supercell, which was near Rapid City at the time I targeted it.  Alas, a large yet … [Read more...]