SkyPix

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

Wray Bands

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A Colorado High Plains supercell stretched itself out into an exquisitely elongated, banded form, liberally festooned with layers and laminar striations, as if participating in an atmospheric version of a contortionist circus.  This storm began over shallow but strong outflow from a previous supercell, paralleling the track of the earlier storm just to its east, and may have been elevated most or … [Read more...]

Clallam Log

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An ice cube in your summer drink basically has the same buoyancy as the iceberg that sank the Titanic.  A piece of the same waterlogged wood type has the same buoyancy in water, whether it is a puny piece of driftwood weighing an ounce or, like this enormous log, many tons.   That helps to explain why the log could be found at the same place on the beach as small flecks of driftwood, the main … [Read more...]

Danger at Catfish Bottoms

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This menacing-looking, borderline classic/HP supercell in southern Oklahoma formed along a progressive, southeastward-moving outflow boundary, but kept up with it, thereby maintaining warm-sector inflow.  The updraft was large, elongated, deep and rife with areas of cyclonic shear, and intermittently but briefly strong rotation all along the large wall cloud.  Our best view of it during the most … [Read more...]

Fallen Assortment

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A heavy-precipitation supercell formed near a warm-front/dryline triple point and rampaged east-southeastward for several hours just north of the front, a storm of the sort I informally call "ice machines" and "north Texas stormzillas" for obvious reasons.  This supercell laid down a historic swath of severe to giant hail, never to be forgotten by all who observed it first-hand.  I got in its path … [Read more...]

Montana Mothership

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Most folks who started out northbound on I-25 or westbound on I-90, hours before, weren't expecting to find this hovering over the combined road along their journey into southern Montana!  Indeed, both before and after I darted up an embankment to shoot this safely from the median, a few people pulled off the exit ramp and asked me if they should drive onward, to which I responded, "Not for … [Read more...]

Butt Cloud

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No, this isn't about the noxious clouds from a butt, but instead a cloud resembling one!  Clouds can take on many fascinating, lifelike shapes.  The double-cheeked mammatus protrusion at middle right, conveniently spotlit by a ray of sunset, so strongly mimicked the shape of a human posterior that I just had to take its picture.  Mammatus clouds, of course, are named (via a Latin root) after … [Read more...]