SkyPix

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

Traveler’s Twilight

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And we meet again!  I observed and photographed this storm in three High Plains states.  The same supercell that formed in Wyoming, and became spectacularly tornadic in Nebraska just outside Colorado, would end up in Nebraska again after crossing northeastern Colorado.  Along the way, I caught up once more, northeast of Sterling, for a brief but brilliant show of rain-shrouded pyrotechnics in its … [Read more...]

Energized by Menacing Sky

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The bowing, eastward-racing cluster of severe thunderstorms battered town after town strung along I-70, then US-24, from Goodland to Colby to here:  Hoxie, and beyond.  Incoming wicked sky of dark, ominous character fills most citizens with dread, fright and foreboding, and understandably so.  Regardless, I love this look, this experience, and have since infancy.  It makes me feel energized, and … [Read more...]

Making Hay

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This storm-observing day threatened to end as a bust, with supercells distant north and south, and the intervening, nearby target sputtering unsuccessfully for hours.  Finally, soon before sunset, a beautiful eruption of multicell storms painted the Sandhills sky to the east, while a wonderful foreground of corn and hay caught the warm light of the magic hour.  How symbolically appropriate, then, … [Read more...]

Dusty High Plains Tornado

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Rather like a puffer fish, this tall High Plains tornado (best manifest by the darkest, somewhat tilted column within the dust mass) made itself look much bigger than it was. It lofted enormous volumes of dirt from a plowed field, centrifuging much of the soil outside the radius of maximum winds, then into the surrounding, subcloud mesocyclone and rear-flank downdraft. Such behavior gave it an … [Read more...]

Happy Sky

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Deep and crisply defined convective towers of a Texas Panhandle supercell rolled up from laminar low-level plates, pumping mass into the delicately fibrous ice-crystal anvil plume festooned with streaky mammatus.  The skeletal rear-flank downdraft's precipitation plunge (lower left) still had enough thrust to launch a rain foot, and enough outflow to kick dust (lower middle) ahead of it.  Though … [Read more...]

Blast and Swirl

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Spectacular supercell in central Texas…in mid June?  You bet!  The weather pattern was highly unusual to place strong, supercell-favoring flow over the Hill Country at this time of year, but there we were.  This booming barber pole of swirling vapors was the second supercell in the Brady/Mason area in the span of just a couple hours, both furiously flinging electricity from their upper reaches on … [Read more...]