SkyPix

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

Hung Low

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Within just a minute, this wall cloud had evolved from a pointy, banded feature to this very low-hanging and flatter form, still rotating rapidly, still monochromatically colored and textured, and still worth watching for potential tornado development.  Although this now-blocky wall cloud soon would erode, the old and occluded circulation didn't go away.  Instead, it started wrapping in rain, then … [Read more...]

Tilted Cone

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Occasional wisps of condensation or spray swirled upward from the soaked ground beneath this increasingly rain-wrapped tornado—the last visible vestiges of a persistent and ominously photogenic circulation in the supercell's farthest western rear area. 5 N Channing TX (18 May 10) Looking N 35.7544, -102.3211 RADAR … [Read more...]

Ragged Rotation

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We had been positioned within a couple miles of this spot for nearly an hour as a supercell approached, watching mostly disorganized wall clouds come and go with no more than weak rotation.  A larger, newer mesocyclone was forming farther east, as the parent supercell moved into richer moisture, but we stayed a little longer.  This was why:  an older, occluded circulation seemed to latch onto more … [Read more...]

A Sterling Sunset

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Combine a sporadically cloudy western area where the light originates, and deeply textured, multi-layered eastern view of rain, storm clouds, and scud, all bouncing photons every which way, yielding layers of direct and diffused sunset light and partial, cool-toned shadowing.  The result?  A splash of pastels hurled across the sky in the form of a fluid, abstract painting.  What a privilege and … [Read more...]

Smoky Supercell with Older Sibling

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This was not only a weird scene, but one with a lot happening.  As the "Roswell Mothership" storm shrunk a little and raised its cloud base, it still remained decidedly surface-based.  We know this because it can be seen here at right, ingesting a plume of smoke from a grass fire that had been started by its own lightning.  That, combined with some subtle differences in cloud shadowing, cast a … [Read more...]

CG and Anvil Crawlers

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Decades later, this is still one of my all-time personal favorites, mainly because of the variety of lightning on display:  a split-channel CG strike, along with a mixture of connected and disconnected "anvil crawlers."  These natural pyrotechnics blazed through a region of light rain trailing a mesoscale convective system (MCS), which was moving SSE away from the scene.  There is no place better … [Read more...]