SkyPix

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

Mammatus over a Sandhills Highway

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A large field of cumulonimbus mammatus streams east from a supercell unseen to the left, high over the Great Plains vastness of the Nebraska Sandhills.  With the vegetatively stabilized dunes impeding any consistently good views beneath the storm's base, we had to be content appreciating with this sight, fantastic in its own right, until the supercell drew closer. 13 S Hyannis NE (11 Jun 7) … [Read more...]

Scorpion Stinger Tornado

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Underneath some striking supercell structure, the Phillips tornado's condensation funnel evolved swiftly from a stubby bump to this contorted form resembling the painful end of a scorpion.  The small debris cloud beneath the "stinger" confirmed its status as full tornado.  Although this vortex wasn't very long-lived, it would have made a fine finale for a productive storm-observing day, just on … [Read more...]

Hay Bales in the Snow

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Here was a cold but peaceful farm scene, two days after central Oklahoma's Christmas Eve blizzard of 2009.  The more sheltered hay bales at rear sported snow caps, unlike the better-exposed bale close by.  Obstacle flow around the solo bale scoured out the dry moat in the snow.  The resulting patch of visible ground actually was teardrop-shaped, bigger on the right than on the left because the … [Read more...]

Sparky View from the Dock

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A heavy-precipitation (HP) supercell sloshed off into the distance, leaving behind refreshingly cool and moist air, a more robustly filled reservoir, some internally lit mammatus clouds, and one very nicely forked strike between its upper reaches and some distant several square inches of ground. The tan-orange glow on the water and cattails came from sodium vapor streetlights that illuminated the … [Read more...]

Tornado Time: North Side

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This wide-angle photo—featuring multilevel tail clouds under the vault—was taken a couple seconds before the companion shot of the storm's south side (a striated bell shape), with the two image domains overlapping in vicinity of the funnel at left.  A small, short-lived tornado soon would evolve from that funnel cloud, nearly atop U.S. Highway 34.  Whenever I see a tornado crossing a highway—but … [Read more...]

Tornado Time: South Side

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Over four hours and two hundred driving miles after observing a fantastic supercell in northeastern Kansas, here we were standing before another one, this time a strikingly beautiful yet menacing beast bearing down on us with a growing, bulbous funnel in tow. Within less than 30 seconds, the funnel cloud would become the first of two photogenic tornadoes we witnessed between Grand Island and … [Read more...]