SkyPix

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

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

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That quote, from David Reynolds of the British severe-storms group TORRO, best describes this photo, which has become one of the most popular in my portfolio for its inspirational elegance in simplicity.  The hole opened between showers in an otherwise solid deck of nimbostratus, casting a subtle brightening across the cityscape.  Had I trudged from office building to car on this dark, wet … [Read more...]

Davis Mountains Stormscape

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A West Texas desert storm rolled over Marfa then off into the Davis Mountains, leaving behind an eerily wondrous scene of cool outflow scud on the peaks, a rainbow, and a faint hint of the double bow (at left)—all beyond an oddly greened and wettened landscape.  The weather pattern had brought unusually heavy rains to much of the southern Great Plains in May 2015, and even the adjoining … [Read more...]

North Platte Valley Funnel

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Swirling along a cyclonic-shear zone east of the main mesocyclone, a funnel cloud swirls for a couple minutes over the North Platte River Valley and Nebraska Panhandle prairies.   No dust or debris appeared with this funnel, one of several we saw on this remarkable storm-intercept day.   A separate storm over an hour later produced another funnel cloud, visible to the WSW from very near this … [Read more...]

Parting Kiss from Patricia

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Several of the most brilliantly chromatic sunset displays I've seen have been on the west side of high-cloud shields produced by tropical cyclones; this incredibly textured stunner ranks right up there.  A deeply granular cloud shield, spawned over Mexico by what was left of Hurricane Patricia, blew northeastward through our wide and wondrous sky.  Red rays of day's end shone through a thin slit … [Read more...]

Hell on Wheeler

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The skies over the town and county of Wheeler (Texas) lit up on this energetic night of electrical mayhem.  After clouds on its backside contributed to a grand sundown, a complex of thunderstorms spat forth a fascinating array of lightning channels as it departed the area, some of which were sampled by this short exposure.  The closer, forked strike occurred in only light rain of the trailing … [Read more...]

The Beauty of Patricia

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This magnificent supercell hurled hailstones bigger than baseballs and spawned at least three tornadoes while spinning its way across the southernmost fringes of the Great Plains, between Midland and Lubbock.  Maybe we could have sampled the hail, or gotten a little closer to two of the tornadoes we saw, but the experience of this scene alone leaves absolutely no regrets.  We drove over a thousand … [Read more...]