SkyPix

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

Fiery Sunset Storm Tops

By

A brilliant, thoroughly enchanting scene greeted me, on this first full day of a two-week summertime photography excursion to the Great Plains and Southwest.  The aim:  wondrous scenes and opportunities for storms and landscapes.  Goal fulfilled here, on both counts, on day 1!  A complex of severe thunderstorms rumbled off the eastern Wyoming high country into the Nebraska twilight, its dense … [Read more...]

Blasting the Borderlands

By

Much like other modes of storm observing, chasing lightning in Arizona often requires many hours of driving and/or patient monitoring before getting into position for the show that may or may not happen.  In this case, I had driven west from Las Cruces, NM, for the first of four days of an abbreviated monsoonal moisture intrusion near Tucson, the afternoons of which were spent roaming the few … [Read more...]

Ghosts of Forest Past

By

Mount Lemmon is a 9,000-foot "sky island" of forests, whose summit boasts much-cooler summertime temperatures than the sweltering valley floor below.  Saguaros skirt the mountain's lower slopes while a mix of evergreens (mainly Douglas fir and ponderosa pine) reside above.  Being set amidst a desert, this place is prone to droughts and the occasional destructive inferno.  In June and July 2003, … [Read more...]

Double Rainbow over Osage County

By

One of the simple pleasures of being behind the storm near sunset is the ever-evolving multi-sensory canvas offered by its departure in the waning daylight.  This storm's post-passage palette began with this double rainbow, cast in a four-dimensional frame along with the refreshing smell of newly drenched earth, the thirst-quenched cheer of warbling birds, and the invigorating feel of a cool, … [Read more...]

Anvil Castoff

By

Set behind the rocky, saguaro-sprinkled landscape of southern Arizona's Tucson Mountains, a multicell thunderstorm and its anvil grow over the distant Santa Catalina Mountains.  An earlier pulse of anvil growth shed a ring of cirrus that nearly completely detached from the original cloud mass, appearing here as a sickle-shaped appendage to the top of the storm. 12 NW Tucson AZ (15 Jul … [Read more...]

Blasting through Pileus

By

During a two-month micro-drought, rain often barely missed us.  The clearly audible, midday thunderstorm that developed just to our east from this deep convective tower was just another in the series of such atmospheric teasing.  Still, I couldn't complain too vociferously, after witnessing the fast-growing tower blast right through a classically formed pileus cap that developed not 30 seconds … [Read more...]