SkyPix

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

Nebraska Prairie Whirl

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Conditionally dangerous yet ultimately harmless, the visible part of this vortex eased across the sinewy roll of the central Nebraska landscape for nearly 15 minutes, metamorphosing from tentative funnel to elephant-trunk form, this, then a vaporous mimic of dental floss.  The tornado behaved itself, avoided substantial structures and caused no casualties, serving only to relocate some small … [Read more...]

Snow Fog and Pumpjack at Sunrise

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What can be more "Okie Winter" in theme than oil-drilling machinery rising through the morning fog, above a field of snow?  At ten inches of accumulation, this was the heaviest storm total around Norman since the multiple "footers" of the late 1980s, sampled in some of the other imagery here, and made a remarkable scene beneath a reddened dawn. Norman, OK (30 Jan 0) Looking SE 35.2353, … [Read more...]

“Breaking Wave” Supercell

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Among the most spectacular supercells I've ever seen, this dazzling storm cruised eastward across the nocturnal Nebraska sky, bathing itself in almost continuous light from its own furious generation engine for intracloud lightning.  The storm itself took on the shape of an enormous breaking wave, while shear-induced, parallel bands of laminar low clouds (containing real waves!) accentuated the … [Read more...]

Cranebow

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Here is but a small glimpse of that sublime moment when, after three days of cold, windy overcast, the line of showers passes east, sunshine breaks out to illuminate the late-afternoon "magic hour", the "American Serengeti" brilliantly erupts with life:   hundreds upon hundreds of sandhill cranes take off into a rainbow-festooned sky as if to celebrate this fleeting window of beauty and … [Read more...]

Slapout Late

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Viewing the "Slapout tornado's" surroundings at wide angle reveals an arcus cloud on the right side (NNW of the tornado), which actually was the rear-flank gust front for a large, newer, rain-wrapped mesocyclone forming unseen to our W (off the screen to the right).  The whole scene looks rather "gust-fronty".  Indeed, if we do out best to mentally subtract a tornado from view (i.e., put your … [Read more...]

Lake Perryton

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No, this isn't one of those classical arcus-cloud scenes from somewhere around the Rio de la Plata in South America. Instead, it's the high, normally dry Texas Panhandle!  As if a previous day of excessive rains in an already-wet spring weren't enough, yet another thunderstorm loomed with its shelf cloud, ready to drench this stretch of farmland.  Is Lake Perryton real?  Not on any maps, it … [Read more...]