SkyPix

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

Why to Avoid Flooded Roads

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A half-mile long stretch of road hides under moving water. There are good reasons why people are advised not to drive into low water crossings when flooded. Imagine hitting this by surprise after dark. Your car and dead body could be recovered downstream, or entombed in the river bottom, never to be found. Even in daylight, you could be swept away and killed; there is no good way to judge the … [Read more...]

Hailstone in a Hailstone

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Holding up a variably translucent hailstone to bright light can exhibit some fascinating and curious textures and elements, including the opaque core that anchored the formation of clear surrounding ice here. This was one of numerous similar stones, rounded on the edges but flattened to gently curved on the sides, that fell from a severe, heavy-precip (HP) supercell. See Bigger than Bicentennial … [Read more...]

Bruarfoss Blue

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Bruarfoss is not one of the "touristy" falls in Iceland and takes some effort to reach--a hike along an unmarked and muddy trail from a dirt back road, in a remote country neighborhood--and as such, can be enjoyed with no other company.  You know we did.  The effort to get there is forgotten when one reaches the river, and as if by magic, this staggering scene opens wide before bulging eyes and … [Read more...]

Convective Tower Shadowing Smoke

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Towering cumulus created a strange and eerily beautiful visual effect, shadowing boundary-layer smoke that had wafted 125 miles from the Cow Camp fire in Wyoming. That 6,000-acre blaze started a few days earlier in the Medicine Bow National Forest NW of Wheatland WY, and sent pulses of dense smoke skyward. Southwesterlies behind the dryline carried the smoke to the northwestern part of the … [Read more...]

Two Mesocyclones and a CG at Sunset

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This complex convective cluster had a lot to offer the attentive observer!  A wall cloud and weak mesocyclone headed eastward with the more northern, distant updraft, still accessing somewhat undisturbed inflow from the more precip-infused nearer storm.   The latter sported a vigorously rotating cloud base in the foreground, around which copious rain and probably some hail were orbiting.  Te spin … [Read more...]