SkyPix

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

Vault Wall

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My final view of this supercell was a mighty fine one, with distance revealing a tall, nearly vertical updraft tower above the main updraft base.  That erectness in the face of favorable shear for tilted storms indicates strong instability and buoyancy.  Most often on the High Plains, one can see the structure of the clouds above the vault region.  When that reveals a tall wall of cloud on the … [Read more...]

Arnett Tornadic Supercell

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Within a minute or less after this tornado started, this obviously was shaping up to be an epic scene, a fulfillment of a storm observer's dream, with an organizing tornado beneath a well-defined, High Plains supercell.  Contrary to some social -media claims, it was not a true low-precipitation (LP) storm at any point during this tornado!  Just because one can see all the structure doesn't mean it … [Read more...]

Temporary Falls, Mt. Rainier

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One of our most photogenic Mount Rainier-area waterfalls was unplanned, unexpected...and unnamed!  Some ad-hoc exploration on a damp, sporadically rainy afternoon led us up a side road and hiking trail as far as the road would go, and right past this waterfall with no name on a small, intermittent brook feeding into Fish and Tahoma Creeks (and ultimately, the Nisqually River).   A couple days of … [Read more...]

Thunderhead over Wind Cave National Park

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Where Great Plains merge into Black Hills, Wind Cave National Park is a little-appreciated treasure well south of all the tourist attractions, but loaded with natural beauty above ground as well as beneath.  That included the sky on this pleasant evening; a gorgeous cumulonimbus with rainshafts, hailshafts, and a splash of mammatus raced past, while both storm and landscape bathed in the lovely … [Read more...]

Westward Tornadic Retreat

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After two other nighttime tornadoes between Union City and Yukon spun into oblivion (dissipation and/or rain), the Union City cone emerged from rain in an older mesocyclone, and began retrograding westward (leftward).  If someone looks only at a map of the tornado tracks, this one may appear to have translated opposite reality.  Why such a peculiar path direction in an eastward-moving parent … [Read more...]

Second North Platte “Spout”

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The second of a series of nonmesocyclonic "landspout" tornadoes, from a big-based multicell thunderstorm that later evolved into a supercell, appeared a couple minutes after the first one dissipated, and slightly farther northwest.  This was a classic "spout" form, with a dust tube concentrated inside thinner dust centrifuged out of the vortex earlier.  A very thin, diffuse tube to the right (N) … [Read more...]