SkyPix

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

Bands of Bright and Dark

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Given enough time and perhaps changed viewing angles, even the same sunset experience can yield dramatically different (while still dramatic-looking) scenery.  This long-focal-length view captured a part of the same late-stage sunset sky slightly to the right of its representation from a minute or two before, but could be passed off plausibly as a different day's sight altogether.  … [Read more...]

Sunset Stripes

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When little or no color decorates your sunset scene overhead or across much of the sky, but some clouds reside above the horizon, have patience and despair not.  As long as a slot of uninhibited light trajectory exists on or even beyond the farthest view, those clouds sitting just off the horizon may light up late, blazed with brilliance for just a couple of minutes.  Those can yield … [Read more...]

Autumn to Winter in the High Country

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Colorful autumn foliage held fast to the aspens as the season's first substantial deposits of snow fell upon the land.  Above and beyond, a blend of fractostratus and stratus (fog, where at the surface) brushed across the mountain landscape, casting a fluid shift of light over the scene from one minute to the next.   It was a cold yet serene experience of splendor in Colorado's high country. 1 … [Read more...]

Towering Cumulus over the Gulf Stream

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Land-breeze towering cumulus clouds bubbled offshore in the morning as I fished off Haulover Pier.  Amidst weak low level flow, as the land cools faster than the water, dense and relatively cool air flows seaward late at night and near sunrise.  Lift along the edge of this land-breeze front forms convective clouds like these, which can become strong thunderstorms if there is even more lift and/or … [Read more...]

Northwest Minnesota Tube

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This "cold-core tornado" was the longest-lasting and best-defined of several rapidly evolving funnels and brief/small tornadoes we saw on this day over eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, see here from a farm clearing between forested belts.   Fortunately, only damage to trees, sheds and grain bins was reported from this tornado.  Not long afterward, we while cruising up US-75 (known … [Read more...]

Cold-Core Tornado

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For years, I had wanted to observe one of the small, often beautiful tornadoes that develop from shallow, fast-moving supercells that develop in arcs of convection, just ahead of a compact middle-upper level low.  Colloquially, they're called "cold-core" tornadoes, after the swath of cold air aloft that accompanies such cyclones, and that contributes to the instability supporting the supercells.  … [Read more...]