SkyPix

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

Sunset-Lit Supercell Base

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On an intercept day with several visually vibrant supercells, including one that swirled over nearly the same area less than half an hour prior, this may have been the most breathtaking.  Being near the back side of a complex array of convection and clouds, windows through the cloud cover opened to permit the setting sun's rays to cast warm tones across the storm's base, and to redden the rain … [Read more...]

Sunlit and Striated in South Dakota

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We already had seen two fantastic supercells on this day near South Dakota's run of US-12:  one looming over the highway near Aberdeen and another with rings-of-Saturn striations closer to the Minnesota border.  That just wasn't enough!  Even though this young, clearly spinning storm was becoming elevated over rain-cooled air from an earlier gob of storms, its internal dynamics maintained … [Read more...]

Apricot Light

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The fading day's rays shone fruitfully upon convectively sculpted cloud towers of a supercell receding away from us and across the northwestern outskirts of the Oklahoma City area.  We had intercepted a briefly tornadic supercell farther north, watched it disintegrate, then headed over to this, the succeeding storm.  That move was well worth the effort!  This supercell followed us eastward for … [Read more...]

Custer City Spinup

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This short-lived, slender tornado danced across the verdant springtime prairies of western Oklahoma for just a couple of minutes, kicking up some thin puffs of dust, but otherwise causing no damage and doing nothing noteworthy besides posing briefly for the lens.  The parent supercell didn't produce any tornadoes until after another storm to its SW had merged with it, resulting in a short line of … [Read more...]

Sunlit Funnel Tip

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After the long and determined drive directly across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains, we watched this wall cloud and funnel develop in classical fashion.  The tapered tip, here brightened by sunlight streaming through the clear slot, soon would grow groundward (through pressure drop) to greet the invisible, tornadic inflow. 10 SSW Sargent NE (9 Jun 3) Looking NW 41.4962, -99.3896 RADAR … [Read more...]

Shades of Blue

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In the ubiquitous lists of the world's most beautiful natural places to see in a lifetime, Iceland's Jökulsárlón appears as often as anything.  This is but a brief glimpse of why. The 3,000-foot-deep Vatnajökull sheet glacier has an arm with an even bigger mouthful of a name, Breiðamerkurjökull, dropping icebergs into the lake on a daily basis.  Each berg is a unique piece of natural art, turning … [Read more...]