SkyPix

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

Olympic Mountains in Smoke

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Seldom are the Olympics seen like this.  An eerie, otherworldly aura of light, shadow and vapors suffused the valleys and mountainsides on this cool morning, when a slowly eroding inversion layer held dense smoke from three active, month-long, lightning-initiated wildfires tightly against the undulating terrain.  Overhead, a thickening cloud layer aloft sandwiched the thin band of relatively clear … [Read more...]

One Rialto Moment

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Thirty minutes before, no indication existed that daylight's denouement would be anything other than a really nice beach scene with some twilight wrapping around distant stack islands.  That alone is more than a sufficient and appreciated blessing to experience.  One fortuitously timed patch of cirrus clouds, wafting southward over the sea, centered right between the rocks at peak color, made this … [Read more...]

Dawn’s Glow: Mount Rainier

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Perhaps the grandest of America's high mountains, Rainier stands alone as a massive volcanic sentinel, thrusting itself and its jacket of glaciers into the first morning sun well before the rest of the surrounding landscape.  Normally I'm not up this early, unless awake all night.  However, rotating forward from a set of night shifts, and the motivation to experience this first-hand, helped with … [Read more...]

Apocalyptic Beauty

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Starkly alluring, this steam-burned and denuded landscape contrasts starkly with the leaden storm clouds in the background, reminding us all that a real place in America isn't far removed in condition from the brutally inhospitable origins of our planet, billions of years before.  Someday this entire scene, and unseen parts for miles around, all will blow skyward in an incredible series of … [Read more...]

Pulse Storm, Blasting Past Pileus

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Narrow but intense, an updraft chimney of a low-shear, summertime pulse storm shoots skyward through multiple pileus layers and overshooting its own anvil, into the lower stratosphere.  This storm would drift northward along an outflow boundary for another half hour or so before falling apart under the weight of its own cool, water-loaded downdrafts.  Despite its brief lifespan, this cumulonimbus … [Read more...]