SkyPix

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

Multivortex at Night

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Photographing a tornado at night is challenging for many reasons, the first of course being safety:  don't get hit by the tornado, lightning or traffic!  Fortunately, the best angles for spotting and shooting night tornadoes are well outside their paths—usually to the right and a bit behind the mesocyclone.  That's because the parent supercell's lightning production often maximizes north (opposite … [Read more...]

Upper Lightning of Wichita Supercell

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A tornadic supercell buzzed frantically with lightning, both in its middle to upper reaches, and downshear in the forward-flank core.  The anvil region near a mature, deep supercell's main updraft, and just downshear (usually to the updraft regions east) quite often flickers with these intricately sinuous filaments, offering opportunities for frequent. short time exposures to capture the flashes … [Read more...]

Colorful Finish over High Plains

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Following one of the most spectacular High Plains sunsets I've seen, the atmosphere only slowly wound down its astounding performance, drawing a denouement to the color extravaganza with this pacifying early-twilight coloration.  The last direct rays, optimally reddened through maximal atmospheric path, still illuminated the highest parts of the storm complex's backsheared anvil and mammatus … [Read more...]

Season’s End

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Soon after sunset, we reached the eastern topographic dropoff toward Minnesota from the Coteau des Prairies, and abandoned pursuit of a disorganizing, outflow-sucking supercell that formerly was quite spectacular.  It would be the final storm intercept of the 2012 Great Plains vacation for us.  Fittingly, the adventure ended with this lovely textured sky, composed of both silhouetting scud and … [Read more...]

Motley Dust Bomb

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By the time I had finished with this supercell, it felt like a cantankerous and temperamental old friend.  How appropriate it was behaving this way in Motley County!  I had chased, or been chased by, this storm since its earliest dryline towers near the New Mexico line, its struggle to emerge from a cluster of storms well west of Plainview, organization and reorganization across the remaining High … [Read more...]

City Glow at the Country Lakeshore

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After the passage of a weakening complex of thunderstorms, the dearth of backside lightning was disappointing.  Yet something unplanned was present to photograph:  the glow of the nearby Oklahoma City metro area, heavily influenced by tan-orange sodium-vapor lights and reflected off the underside of the anvil shield.  Meanwhile, the lake⁠—its waves smoothed and its surface rendered to a frosted or … [Read more...]