SkyPix

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

Multicell Storm from Torrington – 1

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Cruising into Torrington after a decent afternoon of storm observing and landscape photography up near Lusk, we intended to meet with a group of friends for dinner in town.  Fortunately they, too, are storm observers, and understood perfectly why we were delayed until near the end of their meal:  this magnificent eruption of convection near the Nebraska border, brilliantly illuminated by the last … [Read more...]

Seibert Sparks

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A lonely, rolling dirt road on the High Plains seems to lead to one destiny:  a severe storm with a chambered, striated cloud texture, darkening the western sky at afternoon's end and flinging hot little filaments of electricity to and fro, as if to remind the captivated observer not to lose attention.  To its immediate north, and just off-view at right, distant sunset colors peeked under laminar … [Read more...]

Geothermal Steam Cloud

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A strange cumulus-like cloud column appears to rise straight from a landscape of craggy, sharp lava rocks.  The rocks are real, but they are the rim of a crater within which steam is generated, every day, all day, year-round—part of the Gunnuhver geothermal area on the southwestern peninsula of Iceland.   I loved the background slate-blue tones of a maritime subarctic sky subtly infused with … [Read more...]

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...]