SkyPix

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

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...]

Extended Spark

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This beautiful blast of high amperage, delicately formed yet deadly if touched, sliced through a darkening twilight along the Colorado-Nebraska border.  Very seldom, if ever, have I seen such a lengthy lightning discharge below the cloud base that also never reached the ground. 15 SSW Kimball NE (13 Jun 11) Looking WNW 41.0168, -103.6879 … [Read more...]

Elevated Again

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Developing as an elevated supercell, this storm underwent a brief tornadic phase when it crossed a northward-retreating warm front into some very moist and unstable air, and at almost the same time, crossed an outflow boundary left behind by a newer storm well to its southeast.  By the time we got back ahead of it, the short-lived and small tornado was gone, and the storm again was elevated—this … [Read more...]

Scud Rags

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A collection of storms in the west through north aggregated their outflow in a short time period, sending a deep but mostly dry gust front sweeping down the plains of south-central Nebraska.   A little of the dust kicked up by the gust front is visible just above ground level, and deeper atop the cold pool, delicate strands and wisps of fractocumulus waft across the scene.  Because the sky already … [Read more...]

Elevated Supercell

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Operational meteorologists consider a thunderstorm "elevated" if its inflow is not directly rooted at the surface.  In other words, the storm is tapping a plume of moist and unstable air above, not at ground level.  This usually happens atop a relatively cool, stable air mass, like one might find on the cold side of a front, behind an outflow boundary, or atop an inversion caused by strong … [Read more...]