SkyPix

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

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...]

Nighttime Elevated Supercell

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For over two decades, I did not scan this slide, thanks to a struggle with perfectionism and the presence of some reflection artifacts (against the side of the window through which I was shooting) that were too much trouble to attempt to ameliorate.  Yet here it is regardless.  Despite those flaws, this image tells an important and beautiful story of a formerly tornadic supercell, spitting … [Read more...]

Nimbostratus on the High Plains

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A line of strong to severe thunderstorms formed not far from the Front Range, cruising eastward over the top of a pool of cold, relatively stable air left behind by earlier storms in northeastern Colorado.  The moist air mass, blanketed with chunks and bands of fractus (scud), trended back into the slate darkness of the nimbostratus beneath the storms themselves.  This dark, brooding scene of … [Read more...]

Mammatus over Downtown Kansas City

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The KC skyline frames a fiery display of mammatus.  At the time of the photo, the supercell spawning the mammatus was also producing a killer tornado with F2-rated damage, 58 miles NNW of the photo site.  This storm is the subject of a pictorial display at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman OK.  Nearly a year later, another amazing mammatus-festooned sunset display unfurled across the sky, seen … [Read more...]