SkyPix

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

7-11 Lightning: Strike Two

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After the first such blast, I was somewhat optimistic that another bolt would fire miles outward from the side of this multicell storm, which looked rather ordinary apart from its wild aggression with lightning discharges.   Surely indeed, it happened, followed in about  a minute by a distant but sharp, reverberating peal of thunder.   Once this amazing, forked eruption of storm electricity took … [Read more...]

Brilliant Grand Finale

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Two hours earlier, on this last storm-intercept day of our 2010 season, a fast-moving, beautiful, outflow-dominant storm gusted itself to death over the southern Nebraska Panhandle, a cold and blustery atmospheric act fitting of closure. As we headed back to lodging in North Platte, however, the final and most spectacularly constructed supercell of the entire season erupted to our SE, shortly … [Read more...]

Cloud-Banded Sunset Sandwich

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Multiple cloud layers in different places seem to sandwich the setting sun, high across Colorado's vast chunk of the Great Plains.  At about the same time, but in the opposite direction, this light brilliantly illuminated the back side of a storm complex.  Swivel your head!  Scan from horizon to zenith in all directions!  Something interesting and beautiful could be happening, sometimes in two … [Read more...]

Cumulus Mediocris, Abandoned Windmill and Pumphouse

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Biding time and watching the sky, while choosing which of two storm-initiation areas to target, we found this great little relic of the Great Plains heritage of western Oklahoma.   The blades still spun, creaky and squeaky, even if rust kept the rudder from pointing them into the southerly breezes.  In the moisture-rich warm sector air, cumulus mediocris clouds, along with a little cumulus humilis … [Read more...]

Off the High Ground

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Just north of Harrison NEb, an unmarked road drops off high ground held up by resistant sandstone and ash beds, rolling down through the western tongue of Pine Ridge forest cover and onto a lower level of the High Plains.  On this moist morning, following the prior evening's passage of three supercells and their heavy rain cores, radiation fog held strongly in the lower tier of terrain while … [Read more...]

Dumas Dominance

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Despite lasting for many hours from near the Texas/New Mexico border eastward across the Panhandle, and being sampled intensively by the armada of research vehicles from the V.O.R.T.EX. project, this big, powerful, imposing, awe-inspiring, sky-dominating "Dumas supercell" only could muster a few briefly tornadic circulations.  Nonetheless, it became the subject of several storm-scale research … [Read more...]