SkyPix

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

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...]

Loyal Storm

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High-based, skeletal and sculpted, this southeastward-translating supercell looked and acted like a Colorado storm transplanted 400 miles southeast.  Fortunately, that meant we only had to drive about 90 miles for something so spectacular.  Despite its lofty lifted condensation level, this storm went on to produce a nearly tornadic gustnado in another hour, and a real tornado after two hours. 7 … [Read more...]