SkyPix

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

Mount Rainier in Soft Clouds

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In the clearing late-afternoon conditions of a departing weather system, Mount Rainier stands high and brilliantly, surrounded by soft cumulus, stratocumulus and fractus clouds drifting through a clean blue sky.  This southwesterly view of the big volcano is uncommon, thanks to lack of unobstructed vantages, but we found one, and just at the right moment.  Here is a summertime sunrise scene from … [Read more...]

Off 19

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After producing the infamous Wind Farm Tornado, the newer circulation to its N tightened and headed NE in the general direction of where I had been—from slightly over a mile away.  Given such a logistically unsuitable predicament, I scooted a little over a mile E to watch the area of rotational concern cross freshly repaved Oklahoma 19.  This was the resulting brief tornado at its best:  one … [Read more...]

Last Gasp in Twilight

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After producing numerous tornadoes in its march from the Red River to central Oklahoma, including the "Wind Farm Tornado" and another near OK-19, this supercell finally had spent all its intense ground-based spin.  Still, even in the fading twilight and increasingly feeble boundary-layer temperatures, a residual wall cloud continued to hang very low and visibly rotate—albeit slowly.  The supercell … [Read more...]

Gusting to Lusk

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The earliest salvo in a multiple-round convective event erupted as a promising wall of storm towers east of the Laramie Range, but then sent a gust front across the High Plains west of Lusk, capped by a pretty little arcus cloud.  Our resultant fears that the day would turn into a major convective mess, however, were ameliorated by a stunning convective display in the golden hour, south of here … [Read more...]

Outflow-Dominant Supercell

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Beneath the anvil of a broader area of earlier and ongoing convection, a pocket of residual, unstable air lay, unperturbed by all the activity around.  When two outflow boundaries merged in that unstable patch, a supercell was born.  Alas, the storm was in an environment of decent deep shear but weak low/middle-level flow.  Despite developing a healthy midlevel mesocyclone with inflow tails, this … [Read more...]

North Rim Light and Shadow

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A marvelous interplay of light and shadow, representing the golden hour's sunshine around a field of altocumulus clouds, splashes the sinuous ridges and undulating stream courses of the Grand Canyon's North Rim.  A faint but apparent haze layer above the horizon represents smoke advected eastward from a couple of fires in California.  This gorge was described by Theorore Roosevelt as, "the one … [Read more...]