SkyPix

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

Pre-Cole Supercell Spectacle

By

In the preceding mesocyclonic cycle before the Cole tornado, the same supercell exhibited striking structure—from the slowly rotating wall cloud at lower left up through the vault region at upper right.  This had become a wide updraft within an environmentally favorable parameter space of moisture, shear and instability, giving me more confidence in its tornado potential, if the storm wouldn't get … [Read more...]

Pioneers’ Nightmare

By

Imagine:  long before modern weather knowledge, being a pioneer settler in a covered wagon, following some High Plains trail out to a promise of “whiskey, women and gold”, or at least free land to homestead, and seeing this roll over the endless-looking shortgrass prairie horizon right toward you.  Way out yonder on the great wide open with no place to shelter, no place to hide… 2 S Brewster KS … [Read more...]

Brief Subvortex

By

For once, I was in optimal position to see such a process briefly become tornadic before being undercut.  This was one of a handful of successive tornadic subvortex spinups under the area of rapid rotation at lower middle, described reasonably well by a different spotter as a short-lived, weak multivortex.  [The faint wisp of another subvortex barely lingers just to the left of the obvious … [Read more...]

Summertime Coolness with Stratocumulus

By

My return home from the last trip of 2023 chase season featured a scene you’ll seldom see:  a verdant Oklahoma Panhandle in July, beneath a clean, blue sky full of soft stratocumulus. Multiple shots of heavy rain from thunderstorm complexes preceded this, including the one that left behind cool outflow earlier the same morning.  The purity and serenity of this view made it seem if somebody … [Read more...]

Traveler’s Twilight

By

And we meet again!  I observed and photographed this storm in three High Plains states.  The same supercell that formed in Wyoming, and became spectacularly tornadic in Nebraska just outside Colorado, would end up in Nebraska again after crossing northeastern Colorado.  Along the way, I caught up once more, northeast of Sterling, for a brief but brilliant show of rain-shrouded pyrotechnics in its … [Read more...]

Energized by Menacing Sky

By

The bowing, eastward-racing cluster of severe thunderstorms battered town after town strung along I-70, then US-24, from Goodland to Colby to here:  Hoxie, and beyond.  Incoming wicked sky of dark, ominous character fills most citizens with dread, fright and foreboding, and understandably so.  Regardless, I love this look, this experience, and have since infancy.  It makes me feel energized, and … [Read more...]