SkyPix

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

Colorado Highway Spectacular

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[Click Image to Enlarge] Two major updraft areas, fronting thin but severe cores, spectacularly spanned half the sky in this little piece of the Colorado High Plains.  The left and main one curves around a substantial, if high-based, supercell, while the updraft at right erupted along the supercell's forward-flank/inflow interface.  This crazy light just lasted for a couple minutes in the "golden … [Read more...]

Horseshoe Storm Base

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Following an outflow boundary trailing from a previous, fast-hauling supercell in northeastern Kansas, we found a younger yet mature storm, this one somewhat slower-moving and (for now, not for long) surface-based.  The mesocyclone region of this supercell was at right, where a ragged wall cloud can be seen.  Warm light of the "Golden Hour" sifted all through the storm, which wasn't very dense.  … [Read more...]

Unwise Path

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A fast-moving, hail-hauling, gust-blasting, heavy-precipitation supercell is no place to go.  As such, the road this way was decidedly an unsafe route at this time, and we would have discouraged anyone northbound from continuing for another 10–15 minutes, at least.  This very thing, I've had to do on several occasions while photographing storms!  I hope to have saved those folks a great deal of … [Read more...]

Snow Pockets on Roadcut

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Cobbles and protrusions of buff to tan and gray limestone in the Ordovician Bromide formation, along a north-facing roadcut slope, offered ample pockets and crevices for lingering unmelted snow.  The cool, cloudy conditions, though above freezing, allowed one more day of this fascinatingly mottled scene before more melting in an above-freezing north wind would erase the white parts.  5 S Davis OK … [Read more...]

Flint Hills HP

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Following a few hours of non-atmospheric sightseeing in northeastern Kansas, waiting for storms to form along a slow-moving, partly stalled boundary, storms erupted all along it in quick succession.  That wasn't a desired outcome in an environment that favored nice supercells if that didn't happen.  So we made the best of the mess, intercepting the first embedded supercell to roll up the line.  It … [Read more...]

Whale’s Mouth and Core

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Manifesting nicely the cliché, "History may not repeat, but it does rhyme," this turbulent underside echoes another I photographed one state to the south and nine years earlier.  The visual similarity is uncanny!  However, this time the process leading to essentially the same "whale's mouth" scene was much different:  the rear-flank downdraft of a large, outflow-dominant, heavy-precipitation … [Read more...]