SkyPix

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

Two LPs

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Unusual in such close proximity, two high-based, low-precipitation (LP) supercells drift across the western Nebraska sky in opposing stages of marginal supercellular organization, as if ships of vapor passing in the daylight.  The right (northern) storm, small and shrinking, had been the first, but no longer produced noticeable rain, and would be mere wisps of remnant cloud material within another … [Read more...]

Wind on the Way

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This wild sky had a rather simple cause.  A shelf cloud, formed and driven by damaging outflow winds, advanced across the northwest Texas scrublands, while separate lifted layers above the gust front condensed cloud material into wild, banded and spiky formations.  Meanwhile, trailing cores of heavy rain and hail also spit forth lightning, making westward travel hazardous in the area. 4 WNW … [Read more...]

Mobile Home Pieces in Trees

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Debris from a demolished mobile home park, not already produced in the front eyewall, was scattered by Andrew's backside southeast winds through a denuded fruit orchard along Silver Palm Drive.  Meanwhile, a rumbling thunderstorm in the background raised the unease of residents remaining in nearby areas.  These trees suffered at least as much from battering by airborne missiles as from the wind … [Read more...]

Windy Fuel

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Temporarily, a Texas High Plains supercell (foreground) was getting messier, thanks to a large multicell storm that formed immediately upshear to its southwest (left rear).  Still, the supercell dropped severe hail and damaging winds, along with exhibiting occasional wild structure, in a swath near Plainview and eastward through this spot and off the Caprock.  Some of those winds made these blades … [Read more...]

Multivortex at Night

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Photographing a tornado at night is challenging for many reasons, the first of course being safety:  don't get hit by the tornado, lightning or traffic!  Fortunately, the best angles for spotting and shooting night tornadoes are well outside their paths—usually to the right and a bit behind the mesocyclone.  That's because the parent supercell's lightning production often maximizes north (opposite … [Read more...]

Upper Lightning of Wichita Supercell

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A tornadic supercell buzzed frantically with lightning, both in its middle to upper reaches, and downshear in the forward-flank core.  The anvil region near a mature, deep supercell's main updraft, and just downshear (usually to the updraft regions east) quite often flickers with these intricately sinuous filaments, offering opportunities for frequent. short time exposures to capture the flashes … [Read more...]