SkyPix

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

Double Downbursts

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While one "Arizona Mountain Downburst" (left) still was raging on and moving southward, another at right unloaded in a heavy way.  The sharpness of the rain cores loosely mimicked wedge tornadoes, and I say "loosely" loosely.  No doubt many who got the rain welcomed it, even with the sporadic flash flooding in the rugged terrain.  Within less than half an hour, cloud bases from these all the way … [Read more...]

Sycamore Seedball Sunset

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Damaged badly in October of the previous year by an early-season ice storm, one of our sycamores recovered and regrew enough to offer a nice collection of their hard, rough seedballs for the following season, here silhouetted in yet another beautiful central Oklahoma sunset display.  Between these and the spiked version offered by two nearby sweetgums, a barefoot stroll around the backyard isn't … [Read more...]

Mountain Sparks through Dust

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This shot has a dusty hue for good reason.  The rather uncommon coloration for a twilight lightning image can be attributed to a big pall of dust, from the same haboob that earlier yielded great sunset colors and photogenic dust plumes, and now was whipping the hardy desert scrub hither and yon in the wind.  One positive side effect of having a pandemic facemask supply aboard was using one to … [Read more...]

Supercellular Hatch

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Looming over low mountains across the Rio Grande from Hatch, NM, this peppy little southward-moving supercell spun for about an hour before being overtaken by outflow-dominant convection farther northeast.  Wait, what?  A supercell in southern New Mexico in mid July?  You bet!   Though flow aloft wasn't especially strong, a dominant northerly component atop southerly surface flow (and enhanced … [Read more...]

Desert Haze: Smoke and Dust

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Unlike a lot of Midwestern, Eastern and Gulf Coast haze, this involved little or no industrial pollution.  The day before, a tremendous haboob began with convection in the mountains northeast of Las Cruces, NM, and swept over most of southern New Mexico into southeastern Arizona, contributing to wrecks on I-10 that snarled traffic for hours, and lofting countless millions of tons of dust … [Read more...]

Blue Sky Anvil

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Defying the sign below, an increasingly dense cumulonimbus anvil spreads across miles of sandy Arizona desert, originating off the Chiricahua Mountains at unseen right rear.  Do you think the atmosphere cares about this sign (other than to pop it with lightning sometime)?  Befitting the fickle nature of orographically fired monsoonal multicells, areas of the mountains and immediately adjoining … [Read more...]