SkyPix

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

Path to the Sky

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Sunset's warming hues cast aglow a splendidly unsettled, chaotic, richly textured Great Plains sky following a complex of storms.  The cut-wheat path seems to climb there, beneath the altocumulus band and higher mammatus field.  Despite being known as a "cool-color film", I'd say Provia rendered this one well, in my last full year of slide shooting. 3 WSW Lockett TX (13 May 5) Looking … [Read more...]

Beyond 190 Miles

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Multiple areas became apparent on the morning forecast charts for supercell potential: one close to our southeastern Wyoming starting point, one far, and one very far.  After very little happened at the closest (southwestern South Dakota), and nothing at the far (northwestern South Dakota), it was too late to get to the very far (east-central to northeastern Montana).   Instead we eased our pace, … [Read more...]

Cauliflower Towers

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Even in its weakening, post-tornado stages, surrounded by other growing convection that soon would absorb it, the Prospect Valley supercell offered one final moment of convective glory with this display of massive, rotating and sharply defined storm towers.  After the tornadic mesocyclone weakened, the one to its east rotated nicely but didn't produce, its low levels eroding at left even as the … [Read more...]

Under Wicked Sky

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Stormy, turbulent, dark skies—crackling with lightning and moving fast—not only do not bother me, they enchant and enthrall me.  Since earliest childhood, before I could remember, I have been attracted in something close to moth-flame fashion to wicked skies that frighten many others.  When the daytime turned dark in the city and the ominous explosions of lightning and thunder began booming above … [Read more...]

More Anvil Zits

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Two supercells, in close proximity to each other and about 15–20 miles to my NNW–NE, joined forces for a lightning show aloft that was not to be forgotten by those of us who sat on that big signal hill E of Anadarko to watch the sky erupt.  The flurry was so furious that 24-mm wide-angle exposures averaged more than a flash every second, without fail.  Relentless and continuous discharges flung … [Read more...]

Spider Lightning

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Filamentous lightning that visibly spreads out beneath a storm's anvil canopy is known as anvil crawlers, or "spider lightning".  Here, the latter moniker is more appropriate than usual, given the arachnid geometry of the discharge.  This electricity burst forth in quick shots downshear from a supercell that was being overtaken by a bow echo.  Individual lightning tendrils spread much more … [Read more...]