SkyPix

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

Path of Least Resistance

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Sometimes the path of least resitance is quite far from a straight line, visually inefficient to us but quite plausible for the atmosphere.  This shot shows that, and also, proves lightning doesn't have to seek the tallest point.  Someone standing near the top of the mountain here wouldn't have been hurt,  though he might have gotten quite a fright from the passage of 30,000 amperes of electricity … [Read more...]

Pyroconvective Plume

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This view of the "Noble" fire plume (most of which by then was in far east Norman) and its towering pyrocumulus formation (a subset of the flammagenitus cloud type), was from 10 miles away at the National Weather Center.  As dozens of structures burned, hundreds of people evacuated, and many miles of rural township/range grid roads closed, including the main east-west artery through the area … [Read more...]

Tornadic Marionette

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Happy birthday to me!  This was the second, and most photogenic, of at least three tornadoes that I witnessed from a supercell interacting with an outflow boundary--my first birthday tornadoes in over a quarter-century of active storm observing.  It was no easy feat, either, given the hilly and sometimes forested terrain of this part of southeastern Oklahoma.  Fortunately, we found an open-field … [Read more...]

Wichita Mountains Rainbow

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Whilst navigating between two supercells to get to a more distant (but better-organized) third, I could not help but pull off to photograph this wonderful scene, a quintessential view of southwestern Oklahoma, unfolding over the semicircular mass of granite that gives that town its name.  Soon I would see five tornadoes, and this was the second of them. 3 W Granite OK (7 Nov 11) Looking … [Read more...]

Lakeshore Vent: Big Cone

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A sinter cone brightly and markedly contrasts with the elements above: a clean, deep blue, post-thunderstorm sky, and shallow water of a turquoise hue common to the tropics but seldom conceived of a high-latitude, high-altitude lake.  This geyser-built formation known as Big Cone rarely erupts and is feeble when it does.  It isn't as (in)famous in lore as the nearby Lake Shore Geyser or Fishing … [Read more...]

Abandoned Playhouse under Deep Cumulus

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On the grasslands of northwestern Nebraska, an abandoned stand-alone theater slowly fades, destined to crumble into the prairie soil.  On this fine day, however, it still stood nobly, both sturdy and frail, having withstood many blizzards, hailstorms and that relentless Great Plains wind.  Overhead, a mix of cumulus mediocris, towering cumulus, fractocumulus and a distant, small cumulonimbus … [Read more...]