SkyPix

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

I-90 Traveler

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A supercell that erupted with brilliant grandeur over the South Dakota plains cruised steadily ESE, over and just N of I-90, for hours and hours.  Along the way, it treated a growing gaggle of tag-along observers not only to photographic opportunities and a good array of severe weather⁠—from funnel clouds and hail to severe wind⁠—but also, to a lesson in storm evolution.  After a high-based LP … [Read more...]

Sells Sunset

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Sunset skies over the southern Arizona desert emptied a bounty of desperately welcomed precipitation through a reddening, cloud-filtered canvas of light.  The rain, overdue given this late start of the summer monsoon pattern, contained several large sparks.  This one jolted something near (not at!) the top of the Coyote Mountains, a few miles northeast of Kitt Peak, which (unseen at right) also … [Read more...]

CG from the 412 Storm

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Even though the US-412 storm was weakening and getting elevated above a more stable boundary layer, it still offered one final flurry of lightning.  Fortunately I was able to capture one of these fleetingly repetitive, high-amperage sparks, plugging the storm's residual vault region into a reservoir of built-up ground charge. 7 ESE Garber OK (8 Apr 11) Looking NNE 36.3979, -97.4789 … [Read more...]

412 Storm

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Peering superficially from the inflow region into an occluding low-level mesocyclone, the observer first might suspect a tornado in the dark column.  It's just a plume of heavy rain, maybe some hail—part of the rear-flank downdraft wrapping around the near side of the circulation. A subsection of the RFD (the occlusion downdraft) slices the left-rear part of the cloud base nearly in two with a … [Read more...]

1906 Portland Soldiers Monument, Foggy Night

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Mounted in 1906 but date-stamped 1904, this statue memorializes the 2nd Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment, from the Spanish–American War.  It also had an unintended symbolism on this breezy yet foggy night, when the short time exposure caught streaks of stratus through the moonlight.  On the other side of downtown, police were out in force, dealing with loud and occasionally belligerent, … [Read more...]

Cumulonimbus beyond Petroglyphs

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Petroglyphs make a fine late-afternoon foreground for an otherwise ordinary, small cumulonimbus that developed over the next mountain range.  To make this rock art, Hohokam people, who occupied this area around 1600-400 years ago, used stone tools to scrape through the "desert varnish" coating, exposing unweathered sandstone beneath.  The motivation for these petroglyphs, and their intended … [Read more...]