SkyPix

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

A Sunset for the Birds

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Nearly 32 years and 200 horizontal feet downhill from where I shot one of my earliest lightning slides, a small patch of the sunset sky very briefly lit up in a classical shade of sunset golden-orange.  Most of the sky missed out on good color, and even this was brief.  Still, familiarity, flexibility and foresight allowed this moment to be caught for posterity, as I had been touring the Dallas … [Read more...]

Sunrise Upstairs

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An infrared satellite loop, shortly before dawn, showed a deck of high clouds overhead, thinning eastward.  This cloud setup is one of a handful that I most like to see for a nice sunrise, and loudly proclaimed the command:  "Get yourself and camera up to the roof!"  Though the best coloration was short-lived, it was memorable and well-textured, thanks to alternating bands of wavy and smeared … [Read more...]

Distant Multivortex

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After developing quickly into a conical shape, the Tipton (KS) tornado's visual cloud form expanded, going through this rapidly evolving, tumultuous, multiple-vortex phase.  This is a common evolution I've seen with longer-lived tornadoes in helicity-rich and high-humidity environments, such as the Dover/Kingfisher event from 2010 , the Minco tornado from 3 May 1999 (even faster-changing, … [Read more...]

Back LIT

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Behind the initial gust front, and under the associated shelf cloud, this cloud base briefly but strongly rotated, making us wonder what it could do, despite the cool, seemingly stable air blasting past us from the north (right).  As expected, the outflow-undercut spinning didn't tighten further nor last long, but captured out interest long enough to keep us around an extra minute or two, just in … [Read more...]

Altocumulus Translucidus Undulatus

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The last day of 2001 featured a fair, dry, mild afternoon, ideal for wheeling around the north rim of Denton with my young kids on the way to visit friends.  The last thing I thought I would do just minutes before would be to pull off and shoot a cloud slide...until I did.   The winter sky over North Texas came aglow with undulating, translucent altocumulus (hence the title's nomenclatural … [Read more...]

Carlsbad: Spikes Down

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Spotlit stalactites stand out starkly against the lumpy cavern floor in this section of the famous Carlsbad Caverns.  Each point represents the current terminus of a dripline of mineral-rich water, where evaporation causes each drop to deposit a some calcium carbonate and staining iron minerals that had been dissolved from the limestone layers above.  Even though southeastern New Mexico doesn't … [Read more...]