SkyPix

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

Drifted Hail Assortment

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After a prolonged hailstorm and a brief bout of heavy rain, the responsible supercell and its shallow flash flooding departed for the Caprock ledges and left behind hail drifts.  An exquisite variety of mostly rounded, partially melted ice balls remained—some clear, some opaque, others both, in layers—and as with snowflakes, no two identical. Mosquero NM (6 Jun 14) Looking W 35.7771, -103.9581 … [Read more...]

McClellan Lake Tornado

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This taught me not to give up on even a seemingly outflow-dominant supercell.  Just 20 minutes earlier, we sat in dusty, frigid, northwest winds, gushing from an old mesocyclone that had become rain-wrapped and suffocated by cold air.  After we moved southeast, a new mesocyclone formed along an inflection point in the outflow boundary, and beneath some high-based but intense updrafts.  The new … [Read more...]

Sunset Mammatus, Kansas High Plains

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This reward of sunset-illuminated mammatus awaited at the end of a circuitous chase day through parts of five states—Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas (NW tip), Oklahoma (again), and Kansas.  While we saw many interesting scenes and several photogenic tableaus during the day, the last rays of the diurnal sun offered the richest and most wholly fulfilling High Plains memories.  In ten minutes … [Read more...]

Basal Basalt, Svartifoss

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Spray from Svartifoss (Black Falls) ricochets off hexagonal chunks of columnar basalt that fractured off the ledges above, creating a ghostly outline around the rocks in a short, daylight time exposure.   The moderately steep hike up to this phenomenal natural formation was worth every step, for such a soothing scene, along with the sound and feel of the spray, served the necessity of rest ever so … [Read more...]

Rotating Storm

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More than twisting in the wind, this storm was made of twisting wind.  It developed near the Front Range of Colorado and moved toward the east-southeast, encountering a vertical profile of winds that veered from southeasterly to westerly and increased with height.  This is the the classical ingredient of wind shear in the recipe for the atmosphere to cook up a supercell.  The band of cloud … [Read more...]

Olympic Coast Reflections

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Soon to set behind clouds, some of the last sunshine in the conterminous United States beamed crepuscular rays across the sky, a beautiful backdrop to the sea-stack festooned coastline.  For periods a few seconds at a time, a certain stage of wave retreat left a shallow shimmer on the sand, one I'll call mercurial in two contexts:  changeability and visual reflectivity.  The experience offered a … [Read more...]