SkyPix

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

Lightning on Cheyenne Ridge

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We thought the storm-observing day was nearly over after exiting the backside of an outflow-dominant complex of storms and marveling at its sunset mammatus display.  Instead, in the southwestern half of the sky, crackles of distant thunder appeared from an intensifying left-moving storm moving generally in our direction, while an occasional, tall stroke split the air beneath.  All around, the … [Read more...]

Optical Glory

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One of the best ways to see a glory is from an aircraft overflying liquid-water clouds. Sunlight is backscattered toward the sun by uniformly sized cloud droplets, in a process loosely akin to the visualization of a rainbow (but with far smaller water particles). When observing a true glory, your eyes always will lie on a straight line between its middle and the sun behind you. Put another way:  … [Read more...]

Bigger than Bicentennial

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One smooth but decidedly severe hailstone lies atop a fencepost, compared to a celebratory coin milled 34 years earlier. Conveniently, a quarter is an inch across; so this hail reached two inches in diameter, qualifying it as "significant" by conventional definition. Hailstones actually should be measured precisely with a ruler or calipers when reporting maximum diameter to the National Weather … [Read more...]

Wall off Saga Bay Apartments

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The most intense portions of Andrew's eyewall passed over this spot, stripping a poorly attached exterior wall off an apartment building in the Saga Bay development northeast of Homestead. [This was close to Burger King corporate headquarters, where Andrew's 16.9 foot storm tide is a South Florida record.] After the hurricane, some residents of this building salvaged their belongings by lowering … [Read more...]

Sundogs (Parhelia)

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Sundogs (also known as mock suns or, more technically, parhelia) sometimes can be seen 22° to the left and/or right of the sun, depending on the presence of thin high clouds that contain the right kind of ice crystals.  They result from the refraction of sunlight through one short edge, then another, of platy, hexagonal crystals.  Since the parhelia are horizontal with respect to the sun, a large … [Read more...]

Hennessey Inferno

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From the distance we had seen a big smoke pall near Hennessey, on the way toward some storms we intended to investigate regardless.  That smoke turned out to emanate not just from trash or grass--the latter already having incinerated in the foreground--but grove of dry, oily cedars, other brush, and an outbuilding or two on a farmstead.  All of that was going up in tall, intense flames that seemed … [Read more...]