SkyPix

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

Roll Cloud

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Roll clouds are a subset of arcus clouds, but defined by being completely visually detached from other cloud formations, including the parent storm that causes them (in the case of those like this that closely accompany thunderstorms).  Roll clouds also sometimes arise from cold fronts, outflow boundaries, or sea breezes intersecting suitably moist air.   They can be convective in character, like … [Read more...]

Rainy Jolt in the Borderlands

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The atmosphere in the Borderlands south of Tucson was charged up on this first moist, thundery afternoon of the delayed "monsoon" season.  Several brilliant cloud-to-ground strokes peppered the countryside on and alongside the low mountain range to the west, including this one, whose lower-most reaches hid within a core of heavy rain.   A faint, horizontal lightning filament decorates the area … [Read more...]

Horseshoe Vortex Splitting Away: Part 2

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What had been, in effect, a horizontal funnel (Part 1), attached to the middle chunk of cumuliform cloud, split off to become an independent "horseshoe vortex", with enough form and rotation to maintain its condensation and visual character for a few more minutes.  The sunset coloration on these lower clouds made them stand out nicely against the sky (whose blue was darkened by my deliberate … [Read more...]

Horseshoe Vortex Splitting Away: Part 1

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Several horseshoe vortices and fractocumulus-spawned funnels appeared during this late afternoon, following the passage (and above the outflow pool) of a growing complex of severe thunderstorms.  Of those tubes, this hook-shaped one at center-right was the most fascinating, visibly developing along the edge of a small, ragged cumuliform cloud, then slowly extruding from it, as if the parent cloud … [Read more...]

That Wintertime Sun

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Diffused through cold, gray stratus, the low sun of winter offered dim luminescence through an arboreal coating of ice on trees at the National Weather Center.  Silence broke only occasionally as gentle breezes swayed the branches, their ice coating emitting a creaking, groaning noise. Norman, OK (30 Jan 10)  Looking SW 35.1825, -97.4399 … [Read more...]

Fractocumulus with Funnel Cloud

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Funnel-producing convection can be in the form of a supercell, any thunderstorm, even a volcanic cloud, wildfire plume, shower, towering cumulus, or small cumulus.  Any convective cloud or plume that stretches vorticity enough can spawn a funnel, if the pressure, temperature and humidity are right for the tube of air to condense cloud droplets (or in the case of fires and volcanoes, flame, smoke … [Read more...]