SkyPix

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

Mesa Country Zapper

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In New Mexico storms, the action can get wild and intense!  I was glad to be sitting ringside, instead of in the ring getting pummeled.  After the storm became very active electrically, I grabbed the camera sporting the zoom lens to capture some of the discharges; this attempt worked.  This supercell flung frequent, bright, hot lightning strikes, along with severe outflow and hail.  The lower … [Read more...]

Rippled Sunrise

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Undulations in high cirrus crisscrossed the sunrise skies, on a warm and pleasant late-spring morning over central Oklahoma.  This view spans the northeastern vista from the rooftop observation deck of the National Weather Center in Norman, during its fourth year open.  Notice the similarities and differences between this and a dazzling "radial sunrise" seen from another part of the same facility, … [Read more...]

Spotlit Downburst

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A persistent hole in the outflow-lifted clouds, ahead of  a broken squall line, allowed sunshine to spotlight an area of rugged hills and rain above, between Bullhead City and Kingman, as a locally severe downburst descended into its valleys and outward across the desert floor.   The shafts of sunlight shifted upward off the terrain and more into the core, as the outflow clouds evolved and locally … [Read more...]

Evening at Anaehoomalu Beach

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After a "voggy" sunset, it was time to time-expose the warm, tropical Pacific waters lapping against lava.  Fortunately, unlike videos, photographs aren't accompanied by contemporaneous sound; for there was a loud luau booming across the bay from a nearby resort.  Would you have guessed based on the scene alone?  Being big-city born and raised, the noise was rather easy to block out and prevent … [Read more...]

Hawaiian Snow Slope

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In the distance, the tropical Pacific boundary layer hosts placid, warm cumulus clouds, while in the Hawaiian foreground:  snow!  A few times during any given winter, with the passage of a midlatitude middle-level trough, the freezing levels lower well below its 13,803-foot summit while precipitation rolls over, and the top few hundred to couple thousand feet of Mauna Kea wears a snow cap.  Even … [Read more...]

Caution: Tornado Crossing

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Yes, Dorothy, we're back in Kansas.  This classic prairie tornado formed less than 30 seconds before crossing a lonely gravel section road southwest of Stockton.  Right as it did, the condensation funnel first contacted ground, although the tornadic circulation probably was fully in place just before.  [Remember, tornadoes don't "touch down"!  In fact the air in them is rising.]  We had turned … [Read more...]