SkyPix

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

Drive Train, No Truck

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Though not overtly spectacular, this may be the most impressive automotive damage scene for me. In an open field, far removed from any other automotive debris or apparent source for it, the Andover, KS tornado of 26 April 1991 deposited a drive train, axle and wheels, with a tire stripped off one rim. That tornado disemboweled some vehicle's innards, tore them free and tossed them away, as a … [Read more...]

Colorado Crackle

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The trailing portion of a band of high-based thunderstorms slowly became more photogenic as it swept eastward across the Colorado plains, and its outflow constructed a shallow arcus cloud. Then, as so often happens on the edge of a core, including earlier with the same convective cluster, a cloud-to-ground stroke split the sky and sent waves of thunder booming across the High Plains. 2 S Woodrow … [Read more...]

Sheridan Lake Non-Tornado

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[Part 3 of 4] As the Sheridan Lake storm complex of 2011 churned southeastward, blasting waves of outflow into the back side of its gust front, one particularly intense wind channel reached a very dry, plowed field. This stirred up a miniature Dust Bowl, visually imitating the debris cloud of a funnel-deprived tornado. Of course, the cloud base above wasn't rotating, and the dust plume dispersed … [Read more...]

Roof Lightning

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From the roof of the National Weather Center, we cast a wide gaze across the breadth of the OU campus and the city of Norman.  A dazzling montage fills the northern sky:  a high-based multicell thunderstorm, its cloud base subtly tinted by the filtered tones of the sunset light, the internal convective generator blasting forth a big spark to punctuate and bracket the scene.  This was a welcomed … [Read more...]

Submerged Road Paint

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At first glance, one would surmise, "Lake Texoma isn't supposed to be covering this freshly paved and painted roadway." Oh yes, it is -- at least when it reaches near-record high levels. The road curves across a wide, grassy, earthen floodway that leads to the lake's emergency spillway, south of Denison Dam. The floodway stays dry the overwhelming majority of the time, and even contains … [Read more...]

Spray Falls, Lake Superior

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Most waterfalls erode themselves well upriver from the terminus of their streams, instead of unloading right at the mouth.  Spray Falls, which empties Spray Creek into Lake Superior, is a wonderfully picturesque exception.  It shoots 70 feet directly off the edge of the hard, resistant, Precambrian sandstone cliffs, within Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  The cliffs themselves erode shoreward … [Read more...]