SkyPix

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

Last Tornadic Gasp

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Not only was the Chugwater tornado by now cut off from the originally supportive storm inflow, the supercell itself was moving into cooler and more stable air left behind by earlier storms that we had witnessed to the east. This very brief, worm-like dissipation stage would be the last tornado action from this storm, though the supercell would persist in a weakened state for another hour or so. … [Read more...]

High Plains River

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A loop of the Niobrara River nourishes a narrow strip of Great Plains wetlands in the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, an oasis in the otherwise vast stretch of semiarid shortgrass prairie near the Wyoming line. The river arises not in the mountains but with (mostly) dry washes in Wyoming, near Lusk. All of its water comes from the Plains themselves, mainly snowmelt and groundwater, but with … [Read more...]

Arriba!

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The same supercell that had produced the wildly rotating but rather flat-bottomed Genoa wall cloud merged with a smaller storm ahead of it, quickly developing another mesocyclone in an inflow notch (center), with a surging precipitation area to its south (left). Before that hook of rain and hail cut off our view of the cloud-base area, it offered a modestly yet obviously rotating wall cloud … [Read more...]

Washed and Dried

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An area of Permian badlands in northwest Texas contains soft red shales and sandstones, infused with beds of crumbly gypsum and greenish-gray lenses of copper-bearing clays, eroded quickly and easily in the numerous dry washes. The resulting sandy slurry from one storm left behind the pattern of running water upon drying. While the surface still was moist, a small animal tracked across. The … [Read more...]

Blue Sky, Sticky Snow

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Cold, wet misery of an overcast day before, with freezing rain and a bonus coating of sticky, wet evening snow, gave way to a gloriously calm and sunny midwinter's morning—not as cold as it looks—where just a little melting and re-freezing into icicles further textured the scene. Within a day temperatures would rise over 60 degrees F, and the snow would linger only in memories and some … [Read more...]

Ghost of Waters Past

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Down dramatically from deep drought and downstream draws dictated by decree, the June 2012 water level of Lake McConaughy was near its lowest since the reservoir's filling, soon following the dam's 1941 completion. Though it would refill in just a couple of years, the low lake level allowed exploration of bed sediments flooded for decades, including these sandy shallows on a southern cove. … [Read more...]