SkyPix

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

Warm-Frontal Tornadic Supercell: Wide View

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After several zoomed-in photos of the first Conlen tornado, I quickly grabbed the other camera for a wide view, during a bowl-shaped condensation phase that immediately preceded the tornado's demise.  Supercells on the immediate cool side of a warm front still may access surface-based instability, as this one obviously did by spawning tornadoes, but tend to have thicker intervening low clouds, … [Read more...]

Chaotic Convective Cloudscape

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As often happens in these parts, convection that blew up hours before in the higher mountains north of I-10 aggregated together, with the collective outflow rushing into a well-heated boundary layer on the desert floor.  That, in turn, set off more thunderstorms, which pulsated the outflow/convective cycle along well southward into the borderlands.  Dust raised readily from the dry lake bed west … [Read more...]

Mixed Sleet and Freezing Drizzle

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This was the result of the lighter second round of a two-day, two-episode, mostly sleet event for central Oklahoma.  Behind a scene this seemingly dreary, fascinating precip-phase and coalescence processes played out!  A few hours of freezing drizzle occurred, with a very brief, late and light episode of sleet, some of which stuck to the conterminously accreting ice layer.   Unlike most sleet, … [Read more...]

Sleet, Not Snow

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All of what looks like snow here was actually sleet!  Sometimes it seems that sleet (ice pellets) is the default winter-precipitation mode in these parts, given its occurrence in many of our winter-weather episodes.  Still, an all-sleet event like this is uncommon, and was still ongoing with nearly an inch accumulated.  Sleet consists of solid little ice balls, which are raindrops that freeze … [Read more...]

Wichita Mountains Tornado

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Writhing and pulsating nicely, the condensation funnel for the Wichita Mountains tornado came into view, exiting the Cambrian granite crags of the Wichitas and approaching the Carboniferous-aged limestone ridges of the Slick Hills in the foreground.  The early stages of this vortex became visible to observers south of the Wichitas, then disappeared into the road void and hills, emerging again here … [Read more...]

Sunset Clouds and Shadows, Wind Cave National Park

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Delicate and lacy in form, thin fractocumulus shards caught the near-finished sunshine over the southern hills of Wind Cave National Park, beneath midlevel convective debris that later would light up well itself.  Some sunsets sweep the sky with blazing color; others are selectively elegant, yet no less appreciated.  Simple, yet serene, and deeply suffused with a peaceful mood, this in total was … [Read more...]