SkyPix

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

High Bases over the High Plains

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Even nonsevere storms under weak shear can add to the grandeur of a High Plains sky, with the southern rim of the Black Hills lining the eastern horizon.  Such did this fascinating multicell formation developing right alongside our travels toward Montana for  future days' supercellular potential.  Occasional crackles of distant thunder reverberated sharply as gunfire across the grasslands, as the … [Read more...]

Fog Isle

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A little island known as Seal Rock rises through sea fog off the northern Olympic Peninsula, as if a rocky vessel adrift in the vapor.  Too small, stony and wind-battered during the cold season for tree growth, the little isle nonetheless gives at least temporary roost for migratory and aquatic birds, and occasionally, bald eagles.  In the background, across the fog-blanketed, unseen Strait of … [Read more...]

Pleasant Evening by the Bighorns

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Following an interesting storm-observing day in the Bighorn Basin and Mountains, a dinner in Buffalo, and a pollen storm unique to our experience, we retreated to our lodging for the evening.  Not yet spent, I went back out for the sunset and was glad of it.  While not lighting the sky and land aflame with mind-bending color intensity, this more subtle, textured sky still satisfied the thirst and … [Read more...]

Pollen Storm in the Bighorns

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Despite doing it for decades, every year of storm observing brings new sights and adventures.  This qualifies.  After a round of severe thunderstorms rolled off the Bighorn Mountains, a wake low in their trailing outflow pool reversed the easterly flow to a northwesterly direction easily channelized and enhanced in that canyon.  In so responding, the winds shook enormous amounts of pollen out of … [Read more...]

Under the Western South Dakota Sky

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Time itself and timeless tales, stories of homesteaders' hardship and joy, faith and perseverance, somewhere within these walls, forever now are lost to the High Plains wind.  O that wind: it is the same series of airflows responsible for the back-side storm clouds above, for buoying the flight of barn swallows nesting within, for the doses of blown rainwater and snowdrifts weakening the walls … [Read more...]

Sunset Encounter of the First Kind

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To a few native tribes, this tower is sacred ground.  To adventurers, a challenging climb awaits.  To geologists, it's a differentially eroded igneous phonolite intrusion.  Movie buffs recognize it from climactic UFO scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Tourists and campers flock to the tower to experience the looming presence of a unique natural feature in this world.  Painters and … [Read more...]