SkyPix

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

The Blue Ledges

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Ghostly, otherworldly beauty flows across this part of the Yellowstone landscape in the form of rivulets, wash slopes and crystalline pools of hot mineral water.  Below the surface, a mostly hidden pipe or underground stream carries this water many miles northward from the Norris Geyser Basin, where it pours from Mammoth Hot Springs supersaturated with calcium carbonate—the same compound that … [Read more...]

Smoke through Mountains

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A month before, thunderstorms started fires in remote areas of Olympic National Park, followed by scant rainfall over ensuing weeks, and no substantial fire-fighting efforts.  This allowed the flames to spread largely uninhibited with assorted wind shifts.  This scene thus greeted us as we arrived for an early morning visit and photo shoot:  a ghostly, surreal ether punctuated by mountains that … [Read more...]

Upward Cloud Shadow

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The view is from downtown Kansas City.  An isolated pair of towering cumulus clouds were in south-central Nebraska, over 200 miles to the northwest, unseen over the horizon.  I only knew of them by examining satellite imagery; but those distant towers did cast a striking shadow up onto the bottom of a veil of tufty, wavy cirrostratus at sunset. Kansas City MO (Jul 94) Looking WNW 39.0996, … [Read more...]

Retreating Outflow

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Even though this shelf cloud was shooting away from the storm in my direction, it was moving away from me.  This unusual condition was made possible by the extremely strong environmental wind fields on this day, which contributed to storm motions of 50-60 mph.  Cold downdraft air wasn't shooting out from the storm quite so fast; therefore, the net effect was that the gust front and this visible … [Read more...]

Sandhills Storm Sky

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A wild array of bands and striations decorated a storm's edge, high above the Evans Ranch near Hyannis, Nebraska.  Storm observing in the Sandhills often is a frustrating endeavor, mainly because roads there lie below the crests of the vegetated dunes, blocking horizontal visibility.  In this case, there was nothing much to see on the horizon anyway, with the most beautiful and interesting cloud … [Read more...]