SkyPix

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

Beware Storms with Mustaches

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One of the late, great NWS meteorologist Al Moller's favorite admonitions to storm spotters, chasers, students, and others in rapt audiences was:  "Beware storms with mustaches!"  That folksy wisdom, from a keen scientist and father of storm-spotter training, had strong foundations.  Although this storm was not tornadic, some supercells with persistent, mustache-shaped wall clouds are, and many … [Read more...]

Updraft Base, Amarillo Hailer

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After producing baseball-sized hail near Four Way, a few other wall clouds and even funnels, this marvelous, high-based supercell turned almost due southward across the High Plains of the Panhandle, in a defiantly rightward display of deviant motion.   Here it moved directly over the east side of Amarillo, whose downtown can be seen at distant middle left of this wide-angle view, producing hail … [Read more...]

Rain-Wrapped CG

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A young supercell, freshly cast off the formative southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, made its way southeastward across the scrublands of eastern New Mexico, with nearly continual rumbles of thunder aloft and an occasional distant boom from cloud-to-ground strokes.  As with this one, most of the CGs were buried in the main core adjacent to the updraft, though we certainly were vigilant … [Read more...]

Horseshoe Vortex on Supercell Inflow Band

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We were admiring a fine-enough supercell in the western sky when—lo and behold!—I spied out of the left peripheral vision a sight not seen before.  Riding along the top of the westward-feeding low-level inflow band was a horseshoe vortex (far middle left), a slowly rotating cloud tube formed from shear-induced stretching of vortex lines.   Vorticity already is relatively maximized in these bands, … [Read more...]

Keystone Shelf

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It was no time for casual crappie jiggin' in the flooded trees.  Formerly a supercell, this storm was overtaken by the southern end of a strengthening squall line as its outflow and shelf cloud surged toward the western reaches of an overfilled, muddy Keystone Lake.  The spring-green forest, flooded by water laden with red-brown clay, and the ominous slate-gray hues of the approaching storm, … [Read more...]

Sherbet Sky

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A small, soft-looking storm over the high desert (6,700-ft ground elevation) didn't promise much photogenic action—until sunset!  Enough low clouds were in the way that when the hidden mid and upper levels of the storm's convective cloud plume started to light up with sunset color, it diffused downward in pastel through much of the sky and onto the surrounding landscape.  Then, for a fleeting … [Read more...]