SkyPix

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

1908 Reykjanes Lighthouse in Fog

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Lighthouses don't help much when the fog is this dense, and they're usually not flipped on in the daytime anyway.  Aside from the ambient cool, high-humidity, maritime air typically attendant to this corner of the North Atlantic, advection from a nearby geothermal steam area helped greatly to construct the fog, and lent a somber mood of mystery to the scene.   This 1908 structure, residing high … [Read more...]

Brycebow

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Retreating storms cast both a rainbow and darkly textured background past the warmly lit orange stone walls and pillars of Bryce Canyon.  The same storms had passed over the park midday to mid-afternoon, running a lot of people back into cover and thinning the crowds considerably for the onset of late-afternoon "magic hour" light. 4 W Tropic UT (6 Aug 17) Looking ESE 37.6226, … [Read more...]

Thundering Gallup

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One electrically bereft storm passed east-northeastward across the desert landscape north of Gallup, offering a tasty-looking pastel sunset.  The next storm in the line produced a lot of lightning, mostly buried deeply in heavy rain, as with the faint strokes in the middle background.  How glorious it was, then, to catch two more flashes splitting the sky almost simultaneously along the core's … [Read more...]

Sunrise Tree: Fall 2017

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The autumnal southward retreat of the rising sun signals yet another cool season for sunrise opportunities on one of my favorite viewing vantages, with the "Sunrise Tree" framing the left side of the shot.  Here, bases of a honeycomb of interconnected altocumuli snatch the rays and reflect a golden-orange wonder, a texturing in turn reflected again off the water's surface. Norman OK (1 Dec 17) … [Read more...]

Tornado without Funnel

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The supercell already had offered a pleasant dose of high-based scenery two hours before, and a gustnado near a previous mesocyclonic occlusion in the intervening hour.  Although the southeastward-moving storm remained high-based as it approached the Richland/Piedmont area, we surmised that it might have one brief shot at a tornado, when the outflow of a left (on this day, northeast) moving … [Read more...]

Gustnado near Mesocyclone

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Gustnadoes are whirlwinds that form in outflow air, disconnected from the cloud base above.  They are not tornadoes, despite sometimes being misidentified by spotters or misclassified as such in official storm reports.  Occasionally the winds in gustnadoes become strong enough for minor damage, and it probably is not a good idea to walk through them.  Without trying, I've driven through one or two … [Read more...]