SkyPix

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

Virga Strike

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As another of several consecutive New Mexico storm intercepts drew to a close, we were treated to a colorful sunset framed by lightning from a very high-based thunderstorm.  Numerous strikes came from this linear area of dense virga streaks as it moved our way, their sharp reports of thunder reverberating deeply across the wide and treeless tablelands.  The brisk outflow air behind an earlier … [Read more...]

Sunlit Storm over Wind Cave National Park

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This was a day between intended supercell chases, while staying at a longtime-favorite resort of cabins above Hot Springs, SD.  We decided to head out to a familiar over look in Wind Cave National Park to see what sort of wonderful sunset lay ahead.  A shallow, small multicell storm was cruising fairly hastily eastward across the park, dropping copious loads of small hail; within less than 15 … [Read more...]

Wind Farm Tornado: Getting Organized

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Several tornadoes into this supercell's lifetime, one of which I had seen dissipate before reaching the ridge, a big new wall cloud seemed to devour the turbines at right.  Yet a new menace—in the form of a separate multivortex tornado at lower left—was forming directly amongst another part of the Blue Canyon Wind Farm.  I had arrived late to this NE-moving storm, which turned out to be a blessing … [Read more...]

Shimmering Sea

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The rising, midmorning sun shone across this narrow arm of the northern sea, dimming two separate decks of cloud in the distance:  lighter stratus down low and darker altostratus above and beyond.  Yet my eyes gazed intently across the small waves and their the constant, vast sparkle of the sun's reflections.  It was an ever-changing gallery of thousands of points of light, each one quickly … [Read more...]

Deep HP Churn

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While Elke and I still were eating lunch in Roswell, this storm formed on the open desert plains north of the Capitan Mountains to our NW, then became a supercell right before it scraped across the east side of El Capitan, evolving into a dark, menacing, heavy-precipitation (HP) brute.  We first intercepted the storm there and stair-stepped ahead of it steadily as it churned southeastward past … [Read more...]

Tornado and Loop Vortex

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As the significant Canadian tornado slowly narrowed, two scuddy, filamentous funnels in the near upper foreground quickly formed and merged, while orbiting the main mesocyclone from left to right.  Within less than 10 seconds, the feature coiled into a distorted rope and vanished.  It's impossible to say if the loop vortex formed a closed toroid inside the cloud aloft, but in such a turbulent, … [Read more...]