SkyPix

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

“Ground-Scraping” Supercell

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An unusually low-based supercell for southern Colorado, this menacing storm swept across that fabulous vista between Trinidad and Trinchera, just north of the Raton and Johnson Mesas.  The storm was crossing a road void whose lack of habitation was a fortunate thing for the sake of avoiding hail and wind damage.  Might a multiple-vortex tornado lurk in the partly rain-wrapped wall cloud at distant … [Read more...]

Story of the Wind

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A wondrous, classical "rural Kansas moment" spanned the entire sky.  Opposite one of the supercells responsible for this splendid mammatus show, a swath of brilliantly sunset-lit mammatus escaped the storm's shadow, silhouetting both the old and new ways of harvesting wind, in an area also harvesting hay and wheat. 1 NE Bellefont KS (20 Jun 20) Looking SSE 37.8874, -99.6438 … [Read more...]

Rural Kansas Moment

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Following closely behind an earlier, dying supercell, a newer one was becoming organized in the background sunset light.  The wind turbine was on the outflow boundary from the earlier supercell, facing east-southeast.  As such, it revealed that wind direction about 200 feet off the surface, in turn indicating enhanced low-level shear to help the newer storm to organize.  The combined anvil shield … [Read more...]

Electrical Stacked Plates

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Both internally and out into clear air, lightning flickered continually from every part of this wild nighttime supercell that started around sunset, then roamed equatorward across the southwestern Kansas prairie.  Flashing at different distances and intensities imparted wondrous colors all over an already astoundingly textured and constructed cloud form.  My experience here was ethereal, … [Read more...]

Spiky Deck

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With some upscale growth internally, some cell mergers, and a shift into an environment of stronger low-level moisture and shear, a previously poorly organized, high-based, outflow-dominant multicell cluster gradually became a heavy-precipitation supercell.  The spiky formations at upper right probably are related to Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, a well-known aspect of fluid dynamics where … [Read more...]

Inflow-Outflow Interface

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Young and high-based, this multicellular storm offered both a scenic appearance and a lesson in fluid flow.  Where the inflow and outflow meet, enhanced lift results.  Air hoisted along the gust front, at cloud-base level, is marked by the ragged, discontinuous shelf cloud (a form of arcus cloud attached to the parent storm).  The updraft base ahead of the shelf cloud, while bumpy and turbulent, … [Read more...]