SkyPix

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

Embedded Rotation

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A small supercell formed in a pocket of favorably unstable air, right at the southern rim of favorable deep shear, but quickly became nearly surrounded by other storms.  Regardless of becoming embedded in a bigger storm cluster, the supercell spun strongly at times in middle levels as seen from faraway radars, and tightened up enough in low levels to produce a brief funnel cloud or two, earning a … [Read more...]

Sunset on the Sojourn

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Another storm-observing trip concluded with a marvelous sunset, this time across the northern Texas Panhandle as a complex of storms moved away to the southeast.  I have photographed countless hundreds of sunsets, but regardless of their always unique and wondrous visual character, several of the most indelibly memorable were those ending the last chase day of the season.  There's a reason for … [Read more...]

Outflow Power

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The underside of an arcus cloud shows a classical, characteristic, crumpled shape.  These clouds form in turbulent uplift of warm air, which rises over the relatively cold dome of wind hurled earthward by the storm's core.  The turbine here faces the wind and reveals its northwesterly direction.  Thunderstorm outflow bothers observers at times, but is good news for Texas electricity customers when … [Read more...]

Bighorn Basin Supercell

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This was a rare treat:  a supercell spinning over northern Wyoming's arid yet starkly beautiful Bighorn Basin.  The basin is surrounded on all side by mountains, including the lofty Bighorns to the east, with only a very narrow gap in the north connecting it to the Great Plains of southern Montana.   As such, very little precipitation falls here, with storms mostly staying in the mountains or over … [Read more...]

Cumuli over the Tepees (Painted Desert)

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Cumulus humilis, cumulus mediocris and fractocumulus clouds intermingle over a western desert landscape of the sort first photographed in monochrome large format by the likes of Ansel Adams and Adam Clark Vroman—pioneering photographers who not only noticed and appreciated the sky, but made it an indispensable aspect of so many of their classical landscape images.  Note the faint reddish tinge on … [Read more...]

Liberal Approach

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This was the first photo from a rare "after-dinner storm chase", where supper amongst friends on the north side of Liberal was interrupted by sweet atmospheric dessert:  the development and approach of a finely sculpted, if somewhat outflow-dominant, supercell a few miles outside town.  When we went inside to eat, drink and make merriment with friends, a cluster of mushy storms to our distant W … [Read more...]