SkyPix

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

Haze

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Ever since several steamy summer days visiting Houston relatives in childhood, when I was frustratingly unable to see anything above but pale milky sky and not the cumulonimbus clouds making audible thunder, I've found urban haze—derived mainly from "wet" sulfate aerosols associated with pollution sources—to be nothing but ugly. I still do. Yet this is a cloud and sky site, and like it or not, … [Read more...]

Huge Hail

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This enormous hail, up to 4-1/2 inches in maximum diameter, is a potent reminder to avoid the hail core wrapping around the rim of the mesocyclone. Having misplaced the calipers I had then, and still today, I used a standard-sized reference object for comparison. A few minutes before, a 4-incher hit the metal strip above my vehicle's windshield, busting a hole in the adjoining section of … [Read more...]

Aqueous Influences

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The peculiar combination of exposed, gray sandstone bedrock and reddish pebble beach can be explained easily using (what else, given the theme here) water work! The bedrock was exposed and smoothed by glaciation, then smoothed even more by mostly wintertime wave action ever since, while freeze-thaw cycles acted to push out sand grains and further shape the mass around natural faults and … [Read more...]

Frozen Rain

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This isn't liquid water, but instead, ice drops. A brief, quick shot of rain swept over the area in sub-freezing temperatures, leaving the large drops frozen to my windshield exactly as they landed. Appropriately enough, this scene occurred in the mostly empty National Weather Center parking lot, itself was a slippery rink of icy glaze upon which I deliberately spun the vehicle a bit to hone … [Read more...]

Altostratus Stack

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Altostratus is best appreciated when one unbiases its lackluster reputation as gray, dull, bland and ordinary, and looks deeper into the scene. In certain settings, it is powerfully, grimly beautiful, as it was here for me, shooting this film slide. The somber mood evoked by the solitary sea stack is intensified by the slate-like blue-gray of dense altostratus over water. Almost a visual … [Read more...]

Cirrocumulus Floccus

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A field of floccus, more ragged with light virga in front, more dense with less virga in rear, moved high over the log-festooned Hoh River and adjoining portions of Olympic National Park. The term floccus stands for tufts of sheep wool, which the formations in this slide resembled. 25 ESE Forks WA (19 Jul 3) Looking ESE 47.8639, -123.918 … [Read more...]