SkyPix

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

Life and Death in the Caldera

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In the caldera of a super-volcano, nothing is secure but the inevitability of disruption, upheaval and reordering, whether on scales of seconds and inches as scalding steam hits a bug or plant, or every 600,000 years in a series of blasts the likes of which mankind hasn't witnessed.  In between those scales, over years to decades, we see the landscapes and waterscapes of Yellowstone palpably … [Read more...]

Sunrise over Icy Pond

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Recent hard freezes built a thin veneer of opaque and reflective ice on a pond that I frequently visit for wintertime sunrises (when awake and not on shift at work, of course).  One relatively tall tree stands out as it thrusts skyward into the colorful dawn, punctuating a fluid kaleidoscope in the sky with each such event.  This has become a favorite event for me on those uncommon occasions when … [Read more...]

The Blue Ledges

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Ghostly, otherworldly beauty flows across this part of the Yellowstone landscape in the form of rivulets, wash slopes and crystalline pools of hot mineral water.  Below the surface, a mostly hidden pipe or underground stream carries this water many miles northward from the Norris Geyser Basin, where it pours from Mammoth Hot Springs supersaturated with calcium carbonate—the same compound that … [Read more...]

Smoke through Mountains

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A month before, thunderstorms started fires in remote areas of Olympic National Park, followed by scant rainfall over ensuing weeks, and no substantial fire-fighting efforts.  This allowed the flames to spread largely uninhibited with assorted wind shifts.  This scene thus greeted us as we arrived for an early morning visit and photo shoot:  a ghostly, surreal ether punctuated by mountains that … [Read more...]

Upward Cloud Shadow

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The view is from downtown Kansas City.  An isolated pair of towering cumulus clouds were in south-central Nebraska, over 200 miles to the northwest, unseen over the horizon.  I only knew of them by examining satellite imagery; but those distant towers did cast a striking shadow up onto the bottom of a veil of tufty, wavy cirrostratus at sunset. Kansas City MO (Jul 94) Looking WNW 39.0996, … [Read more...]