SkyPix

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

Earth Shadow

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Earth does cast a shadow through space; and it starts in the atmosphere.  It can be seen every clear day just after sunset, and just before sunrise, creating a sandwich effect.  The pinks are outside the shadow—hues of the setting sun refracted through the western sky before being reflected off upper-atmospheric particles in the east.  Since the shadow below has no direct sunlight, it is missing … [Read more...]

Squall Line in the Wichita Mountains

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Outflow is supposed to be the ultimate enemy of the storm chaser, but it can be quite beautiful!  Here, the turbulent underside of an arcus cloud passes over the Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma, with the precipitation core of a squall line visible in the background.  The bright green fields of early May and the taupe-toned, partly scrub-covered Cambrian granite of the worn-out old … [Read more...]

West Thumb Colors

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Hot water pours into Yellowstone Lake from one of the main drainages of the West Thumb Geyser Basin, colorful bacteria and minerals staining the underlying beach in ochre tones.  A band of thunderstorms had moved through rather rapidly within the preceding hour, and by this time already passed the Absaroka Mountains in the distance, leaving behind a clean, chaotic and beautiful sky. Yellowstone … [Read more...]

Patricia Tornado

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This remarkable thunderstorm already had rewarded us for a very long day's drive from central Oklahoma by showing spectacular supercell structures, which continued here as a nifty bell-bottom shape to the main updraft region.  Normally with a supercell this high-based, carrying a nearly laminar cloud skirt with a rain-wrapped mesocyclone beneath, I wouldn't expect to see a tornado emerge within … [Read more...]

Sparking Sky

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I had spent half an hour taking nondescript, distant CG (cloud-to-ground) lightning pictures in the Osage Hills.  The location was almost surrounded by thunderstorms, whose anvils had aggregated together and become increasingly charged.  Then, a sudden explosion of cloud-to-air and cloud-to-cloud filaments filled the sky--including directly overhead!  This photo thru a 50-mm lens shows only a … [Read more...]

Flash with Fireball

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After the Red Halo shot, we reeled off a few more CG-over-landscape photos with the encroaching, increasingly outflow-dominant supercell.  The electrical action and cores started getting nearer also—too close after this CG blew up something flammable on the next hillside to our SW.  For an instant, an orange fireball ignited, and its glow is captured here along with the lightning strike.  … [Read more...]