SkyPix

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

CG behind Arcus

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While taking a short break from escaping this raging squall, we stopped to admire and photograph its tiered shelf cloud and arcus formation with a windmill-punctuated wheat field in the foreground.  This was the rare shot where the lightning serendipitously struck as I happened to click the shutter, though I had been attempting unsuccessfully to capture a few other strokes manually.  We soon would … [Read more...]

Northern-Sky Spectacular

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The best sunsets so often happen on the back side of storm complexes, as in this large field of mammatus. Anticipating the timing and placement, and being south of any substantial hail, I let a former supercell, which was merging with a larger area of convection, roll over me in place.   That effectively is the same as penetrating the storms from front to rear, but without going anywhere.  This … [Read more...]

Wave Clouds Opposing

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A series of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves can be seen in the high clouds—ragged, but obvious, the biggest of them seen "atop" a single breaking wave on the nearer, lower chunk of fractus (scud). Kelvin-Helmholtz waves develop from shearing instabilities, when adjoining layers of air of different densities move at different rates of speed.  Much of the time, such waves are invisible, with no condensation … [Read more...]

Outflow across White Sands

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The collapse of a mid-afternoon, multicellular thunderstorm cluster in the Sacramento Mountains (to the east) sent a magnificent outflow arc across the Tularosa Basin, including White Sands National Monument.  The outflow winds were strong enough to whip grains high off the dunes, reducing visibility and getting into eyes, hair and clothes, even as these were no ordinary "sand" particles.  These … [Read more...]

Fractocumulus of the Low Level Jet

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When middle–upper-level troughs or lows move toward the Rockies and adjoining Great Plains, pressure at the surface falls, and a strong southerly to southwesterly current sets up just off the surface across parts of the plains and eastward—the low level jet (LLJ).  Two common effects of a moist LLJ are visible in this shot.  The first is obvious: scuddy low clouds, which evolve, come and go … [Read more...]

Road to Desert Storm

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A thunderstorm, bringing much-needed early-monsoon rains to this patch of orchard-planted desert, drifted westward toward the Dragoon Mountains, while pastel hues of the sunset hour faintly illuminated cloud and core.  Just at the right time and place, lightning split the sky and the view right down the middle and the road.  This storm flung electrical jabs across the southeastern Arizona … [Read more...]