SkyPix

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

It’s BeHIND You!

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Driving southward past the west side of a supercell, out in the rain-free area just behind the storm, we were hearing tornado reports but couldn't see it buried in the storm's murky precipitation shield to our left.  While crossing a creek valley, this—the dying tail end of the tornado being reported—emerged back to our northeast, off port stern.  The snakelike funnel had quickly popped out of the … [Read more...]

Last-Gasp Circulation

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A tail cloud, clear slot and ragged area of rotation marked the final wall cloud of the last in series of supercells we would intercept on this day. The old, deeply occluded mesocyclone responsible for this wall cloud seemed to be running on fumes, with cool air in its inflow region. Among other events of years past, we learned from a photogenic tornado a couple of hours before not to dismiss … [Read more...]

Steam in the Fog

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It seems post-apocalyptic:  this heat-blasted landscape of conifer skeletons, rising steam, bare and mineralized ground, in a sunrise light that reminds of artists' conceptions depicting primordial planets.   Yet the scene is readily available in some form, on most cool mornings in the Lower Geyser Basin.   Locally heavy rains the day before had left the ground saturated also, contributing to an … [Read more...]

A Peculiar Experience

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Almost immediately behind a powerful complex of thunderstorms, enough instability remained above the cool, moist, somewhat hazy outflow air near the surface to generate still more deep convection.  One can tell that this towering cumulus clump is somewhat starved for buoyancy by its soft, translucent appearance, and the hole almost directly centered on the cloud mass.  We were too bedazzled by the … [Read more...]

Genoa Spin

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A two-dimensional image doesn't begin to convey the intense, furious rotation that was going on in this wall cloud.  The formation, hovering over Interstate 70 in eastern Colorado, spun so fast that I thought it would produce a big tornado anytime.  This was shot wide-angle; so we were rather close to the action.  At least as fascinating as the rapid motions, I found that the menacing black base … [Read more...]

See Six States and a Storm

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On the outskirts of Genoa (Colorado, not Italy) resided a novelty and antique shop that claimed a view of six states from atop its observation tower.  The friendly,  eccentric old gentleman who ran the place, Jerry Chubbuck, was glad to give us storm observers the grand tour as we waited for one of two supercells—one to the northwest (shown here), and another one to the west, to become dominant … [Read more...]