SkyPix

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

Colorado Color Bands

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Off to the right of a broad, sparky, tiered supercell, its high-based, forward-flank core region spawned a laminar outflow cloud that paralleled a band of distant sunset light.  All that lay beyond a nicely green, rolling landscape of short-grass prairie so archetypical for the High Plains. 8 NNW Siebert CO (4 Jun 14) Looking NW 39.4176, -102.896 … [Read more...]

Aspermont Five

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Part of a short but intense lightning flurry just southeast of town, this set of cloud-to-ground blasts erupted in just a few seconds, sending out a roller coaster of booms, crackles and rumbles as their sound waves interacted and overlapped.   To locals, it probably was just another stormy night in northwest Texas.  To this appreciative observer, it was electrical eye candy, and a real treat.  … [Read more...]

Elevated Supercell and Shelf

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A long, graceful, gently sinuous shelf cloud rushed outward on rear-flank outflow that could penetrate the boundary layer.  That outflow mainly came from the storm in middle background—one of a series of east-northeastward-moving supercells on this day that were undercut by a slow-moving cold front about the time they would mature.  Even though I had light north winds at this location—ahead of … [Read more...]

Shelf to Farm

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"Farm to shelf" is a concept involving the directional food-supply chain segment from growth to grocery store.  "Shelf to farm" is when a shelf cloud heads toward a farm.  Makes sense, right?  Good!  That's how it worked here, as a storm cluster that was evolving from a supercell upscale to a larger, organized convective complex started cranking outflow in high volume, with the shelf cloud as a … [Read more...]

Multi-Outflow Sundown

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Outflow from two thunderstorm complexes already had settled in over the Edwards County region.  That situaiton didn't prevent yet another storm (an elevated supercell) from forming to the right (north) in the sunset hour.  Its shelf cloud trailed far past the rear-flank updraft area, and can be seen here in the sky foreground, blocking part of some crepuscular rays and the anvil cirrus.  One … [Read more...]

Rush Sparks and Flash Flood 2

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Elevated thunderstorms, built upon one outflow surge after another, continued to light up the sky across west-central Kansas.  The storms fired spidery crawler lightning this way and that, to the delight of a shivering but satisfied storm photographer and meteorologist.  Sometimes it's hard to imagine how an elevated updraft as small as the one at right could produce so much electricity, but the … [Read more...]