SkyPix

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

Stratocumulus from Beneath

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Drifting placidly over the marsh grasses of Everglades National Park, broad, soft tufts of stratocumulus ride the southeasterly winds from the Caribbean across Cuba and the Straits of Florida.   This is a common wintertime scene, and a far more comfortable one than often experienced well into the interior of the frigid mainland at this time of year.  Air masses containing these clouds generally … [Read more...]

Road Ripples

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On the morning after the infamous Christmas Eve blizzard, interesting snow effects abounded in many places, including sastrugi:  dune-like, wind-formed ripples in snow.  This example developed from windblown snow originating off-road, but only after the street had been stripped down to the icy underlying layer that itself had formed from compaction and melting of earlier snow.  It all made for a … [Read more...]

Twilight on a Northern Lake

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Even with the sun long set, refracted red light that has passed through a lot of atmosphere bends over the horizon, aided by assorted particulates.   That layer, with some forested salad, nicely formed the contents of a blue-bun burger, a delicious and satisfying visual feast, devoid of calories or grease for thoroughly guilt-free consumption as long as it lasted.   This serene summertime scene … [Read more...]

Storm Base under Mammatus

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This high-based supercell—with much more rotation in midlevels than at cloud base—had been fighting its own outflow for nearly an hour after separating itself from the storm cluster in which it formed, well west of Plainview.  Still, it offered a temporarily improving organization at this stage, beneath some of the largest mammatus pouches I have seen.  A lot of mass of gas was being processed in … [Read more...]

Storm in the High Plains Hills

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A multicellular belt of thunderstorms that had yielded a pleasantly stormy sky around Gillette proceeded east-northeastward, offering a final, delightful scene of lightning and textured arcus clouds while rolling off into a hilly area of northeastern Wyoming with few roads.   This was a satisfying ending to a long day of driving and photography from the western Bighorn Mountain slopes past a … [Read more...]

HP Menace

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A ragged shelf cloud formed atop the gust front from a heavy-precipitation (HP) supercell in NW Texas—one of many dark, menacing, mercilessly severe, HP storms I've intercepted over the years, in the general corridor surrounded by Dallas, Wichita Falls, San Angelo and Stephenville.  The cumuliform character of the clouds atop the left edge of the shelf indicates the cloud base was convective in … [Read more...]