SkyPix

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

Rotation at Horse Creek

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Once upon a time in the West, a supercell formed over the southern Laramie Mountains and rolled through the foothills fully mature, rotating strongly with a well-defined rear-flank/occlusion-downdraft cut around the south side of the wall cloud.   That's as far in the process as this storm got on this attempt, failing to produce a tornado on the "inside" of the higher terrain.  It was a bit of a … [Read more...]

Surging Shelf

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A "Pioneer's Nightmare" storm churned onward relentlessly, seemingly engulfing mile after mile of northwest Kansas prairie as if effortlessly, when in fact it expended the energy of multiple nuclear warheads in the process.  Fortunately much of the involved energy transferred to the upper atmosphere, and to generating precipitation, then only a portion of that to outflow still severe enough to … [Read more...]

Funnel-Free Subvortices

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A broadly tornadic, multiple-vortex circulation continued under an unusually low, wet, scuddy cloud base for Colorado—a base that was intensely rotating, but lacking condensation funnel(s).  Here, two subvortices can be seen:  the obvious one just left of lower middle, and a fainter one to its somewhat more-distant right (NNW).   Each rotated around the other, as well as on its own axis, with the … [Read more...]

Hill Country Sundown

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After our last outflow-dominant supercell intercept of the day near Belton, we departed to the backside of the large area of sporadic storms for a sunset view.  This was that scene, looking west through sporadic rain cores, while to the north, a marvelously sunset-lit storm cruised across the region.  The long day that began in Norman settled down nicely amid cool, refreshing outflow, and the … [Read more...]

Belton Blow

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A most unusual June storm-observing day took us not across the High Plains, but:  from lunch in Dallas, to weirdly colored and outflow dominant supercells southeast of Corsicana, westward by a former supercell that was shooting its outflow pool forth near Mexia, to this scenic and recently outflow-dominant supercell transition over Belton, then finally, right past the spot off I-14 where I shot an … [Read more...]

Gaillardias of Outflow

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Finally, as we enter the thirtieth year of SkyPix as a web presence, we have Gaillardias of Outflow in the Gallery of Outflow!  No, I haven't been saving this line for that long, just in case, but the connection doesn't escape me upon making the entry.  A sub-sandwich-shaped shelf cloud, after it moved over, changed the ambient light enough to set this scene across the street.  "Firewheel" … [Read more...]