SkyPix

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

Shell Falls and Shell Creek

By

Awakening fairly early on a moist Ranchester morning with supercell potential on the nearby High Plains, as well as being close to parts of the Bighorn Mountains I hadn't seen before, I had choices.  I could sit around some cafe, library, or my motel room, or hang out at a loud, busy truck stop for a few hours, killing time surfing the web, arguing about politics, and waiting for signs of … [Read more...]

Weak Supercell: Still Beautiful

By

Tucked snugly under the anvil canopy of a big windbag blasting across the Bighorn Basin toward those distant mountains, surrounded by a growing legion of towers and showers, and forming in a regime of weak instability to begin with, this little supercell was doomed to a short lifespan in any event.  Yet here it was, the little storm that could, for the short time that it would.  The vantage was … [Read more...]

Sandhill Crane Sunset

By

Sunset on Nebraska's Platte River can be a wondrous experience any day, but seldom more so than during those few late-winter and early-spring weeks when the sandhill cranes fly in from thousands of square miles of surrounding fields to roost in the riverbed.  Over an hour, from shortly before a "sun in cirrus" illusion to near total darkness, the primordial calls of tens of thousands of these … [Read more...]

Springtime in the Sandhills

By

A messy, young supercell headed off into one of several major voids of decent roads in the Nebraska Sandhills, while merging with other convection to its north and northeast, it's mesocyclonic "hook" wrapping directly from left to right over this remote, one-lane ranch road.  The path is like several in that area:  an isolated, rough, thin strip of asphalt laid down directly upon graded, loose … [Read more...]

Lingering near Lingle

By

This well-curved Wyoming supercell, with a small forward-flank tail cloud, wrapped part of its a rear-flank downdraft nicely around the front side of its mesocyclone, as manifest by the clear slot cutting partly across the front side of the shallow wall cloud.  Meanwhile, a few wispy, short-lived funnel attempts came and went, with no discernible ground-level contact.  This pretty storm saved its … [Read more...]