SkyPix

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

Vortex Within

By

The tornado to right of center, which we barely saw with our eyeballs, was buried in heavy precipitation wrapping around the mesocyclone, and was located northeast of the bulk of rain and hail with this supercell.  Such an orientation of a storm's "business end" is actually rather common in HP (heavy precip) supercells, which may assume a figure-9 pattern to the most dense precipitation.  When HP … [Read more...]

Leftovers from the Liquid Lumberjack

By

Waves can move even the most massive objects about with little effort if they still are lighter than the water.  It wasn't hard to infer how and when these natural souvenirs of hydraulic lift arrived.  The log at left was partially burned at some point before a nearby river washed it into the ocean, probably during snowmelt-related flooding within the previous few weeks of late spring and early … [Read more...]

Everglades Sunset

By

This was merely one of many evenings I have seen the sun descend past these vast sawgrass horizons, but also, one of the most brilliantly aflame with color.  All too often I didn't bring or use my camera, but that mistake was atoned for here as I bathed in a smooth blend of blues and reds framing gold.  With its wide skies, tabletop flatness and endless views, the Everglades was my personal pocket … [Read more...]

Twilight Sparker

By

Despite its being worn down to a high-based, skeletal nub by dry entrainment and stable-air ingestion, the remains of what had been a vigorous little Colorado High Plains supercell continued to shoot cloud-to-air lightning every few minutes.  Here, I was fortunate enough to catch one discharge and the faint ending part of another, with the shutter open on a brief time exposure. 5 ESE Boyero CO … [Read more...]

A Supercell’s Evening Pastels

By

The 30-hour period beginning around 3 p.m. on this day offered two extraordinary storm-chase adventures in the same corridor east-northeast of the Denver metro area and south of I-76—including the next day's Prospect Valley tornado.  This was the fifth of six late-afternoon to evening supercells, and perhaps the most consistently spectacular, in a protracted train of storms rolling out of the … [Read more...]

Annular Eclipse

By

Solar eclipses can be viewed with the eye and photographed with an unfiltered camera, but only near sunrise or sunset, no differently than the non-eclipsed sun.  For that reason, the unobstructed view on the High Plains, and its proximity just a few hours from home, the choice of the sunset segment of the 2012 annular eclipse track was obvious.  The only question was cloud cover, which evaporated … [Read more...]