SkyPix

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

Badland Hills Spotlit

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Spotlighting is one of my very favorite natural lighting effects, whether on land or water.  Here in the less-trodden North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, layers of badlands geology are laid bare for inspection and admiration in the late-day sunshine, marvelously and warmly illuminated.  Many thousands of years of erosion by wind and water—mostly water in the forms of direct … [Read more...]

Old Storm Bronzed

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Knowing the scale of a cloud formation makes every bit of difference in understanding it.  A couple of people who aren't meteorologists asked me if this was a funnel cloud, which of course it wasn't.  Instead, it was the dying updraft column of an entire thunderstorm—and not just any thunderstorm, but this supercell that had not produced a tornado.  As the afternoon faded, the boundary layer … [Read more...]

Ominous Day at the Lava Lake

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The brooding, ominous character of this scene appealed greatly to me, as a fan of deep and dark clouds related to severe storms.  However, like the night before, the clouds here only were low stratus, and steam venting off the crater walls, with smaller steam discharges from just above the rim in both the foreground and distance.  The lava lake had begun rising and oscillating more while we were … [Read more...]

Dakota Mammatus: Northeast

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This expansive area of mammatus, which extended overhead and far to the southwest, developed under the collective rear anvil from multiple thunderstorm clusters, after an afternoon of observing an unrelated, isolated supercell attached to the Black Hills.  Although clouds to the west and northwest blocked direct sunset light from getting illuminating it, the formation was no less amazing to … [Read more...]

Dakota Mammatus: Southwest

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A wide field of mammatus stretched from horizon to horizon over the Buffalo Gap National Grassland, behind a complex of thunderstorms that started as separate areas of storms over the Badlands and parts of northern Nebraska (distant towers and backsheared anvil).  This scene, beneath cool and refreshing outflow air, capped off a fine storm-observing day in southwestern South Dakota, reminding us … [Read more...]

Oklahoma City Arcus

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In this scan from the era's somewhat grainy Ektachrome film (I was lucky to afford that as a college student!), a large, thick arcus thrusts eastward from the forward-flank gust front of an HP (heavy-precip) supercell.  Note greenish tint in the notch between the top of the arcus and the cloud base above it.  The funnel-like horizontal cloud filament on the leading edge of the arcus was rotating, … [Read more...]