SkyPix

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

Strange Supercell Sky

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One in a series of mostly weak, poorly structured supercells embedded in a convective line, this storm sported a wild, laminar, somewhat chevron-shaped cloud deck above the main convective updraft area.  The odd cloud form reminded me loosely of a storm I had seen near the Texas Caprock the year before that looked like a winged alien spacecraft.  I was fortunate to catch one of the storm's … [Read more...]

The Beauty of Atmospheric Violence

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For many years, I've presented a recurring slideshow with this name at the Severe Local Storms Conference, offering beautiful images from often violent weather.  This scene truly epitomized the title.  A strongly tilted supercell with sunset-illuminated wall cloud and wrapping, rear-flank precipitation field receded rather quickly, tossing strong outflow across these center-pivoted cornfields and … [Read more...]

Storm-Struck Stone Walls

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Storms aplenty have battered this relic of High Plains homesteading, from wintertime blizzards, to downburst-dumping summertime thunderstorms, to hail-flinging warm-season supercells such as the one in the background (that nearly spawned a tornado earlier).  Out in this harsh, unforgiving, dryland agricultural environment, a high fraction of storms that can produce enough rain to make crops … [Read more...]

“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...]