SkyPix

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

Blasting the Borderlands

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Much like other modes of storm observing, chasing lightning in Arizona often requires many hours of driving and/or patient monitoring before getting into position for the show that may or may not happen.  In this case, I had driven west from Las Cruces, NM, for the first of four days of an abbreviated monsoonal moisture intrusion near Tucson, the afternoons of which were spent roaming the few … [Read more...]

Ghosts of Forest Past

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Mount Lemmon is a 9,000-foot "sky island" of forests, whose summit boasts much-cooler summertime temperatures than the sweltering valley floor below.  Saguaros skirt the mountain's lower slopes while a mix of evergreens (mainly Douglas fir and ponderosa pine) reside above.  Being set amidst a desert, this place is prone to droughts and the occasional destructive inferno.  In June and July 2003, … [Read more...]

Double Rainbow over Osage County

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One of the simple pleasures of being behind the storm near sunset is the ever-evolving multi-sensory canvas offered by its departure in the waning daylight.  This storm's post-passage palette began with this double rainbow, cast in a four-dimensional frame along with the refreshing smell of newly drenched earth, the thirst-quenched cheer of warbling birds, and the invigorating feel of a cool, … [Read more...]

Anvil Castoff

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Set behind the rocky, saguaro-sprinkled landscape of southern Arizona's Tucson Mountains, a multicell thunderstorm and its anvil grow over the distant Santa Catalina Mountains.  An earlier pulse of anvil growth shed a ring of cirrus that nearly completely detached from the original cloud mass, appearing here as a sickle-shaped appendage to the top of the storm. 12 NW Tucson AZ (15 Jul … [Read more...]

Blasting through Pileus

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During a two-month micro-drought, rain often barely missed us.  The clearly audible, midday thunderstorm that developed just to our east from this deep convective tower was just another in the series of such atmospheric teasing.  Still, I couldn't complain too vociferously, after witnessing the fast-growing tower blast right through a classically formed pileus cap that developed not 30 seconds … [Read more...]

Lindsay Lightning 4

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[Part 4 of 4]  This was the last of six great cloud-to-ground flashes from the same little storm; I captured four, plus the little bonus from a more-distant cell in the back lower right.  The lightning split an increasingly rainy sky near Lindsay, as a core dump through the original updraft led to the nearer storm's quick demise.  The responsible convection, whose ragged, deeply textured, … [Read more...]