SkyPix

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

Every Which Way

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This thunderstorm nearly had exhausted its lightning production by the time I got set up, but one of its last bursts was something special.  To the eye, it was a bright but blinky flash of less than two seconds, with what appeared to be spectacular electrical spaghetti in more of the sky than my view.  To the wide-angle camera lens, it was an intricate, complicated and multi-directional electrical … [Read more...]

Campo-21 Wide

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To an avid storm observer, a nicely developed Great Plains supercell is akin to a delicious upside-down cake.   A tornado is uncommon and just a "cherry on top"—or in this case, a cone on the bottom (right).  In this wide-angle perspective west of Campo, CO, the tornado was widening and weakening at this point, after being a fairly stout, tall tube within its cage of rain and hail.  Though this … [Read more...]

Chiricahua Twilight: Magenta

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[Part 2 of 2]  For this shot, I had retreated back to the vehicle, parked about 50 feet east of the Arizona/New Mexico line, due to light rain and just a little nearby lightning.   I was barely in New Mexico; the fence, scrub brush and mountains are across the road in Arizona.  The golden light of a few minutes before reddened, with more blue too, imparting a filtered magenta tone to sky and land … [Read more...]

Chiricahua Twilight: Copper

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[Part 1 of 2]  Standing exactly astride the Arizona/New Mexico line on a dirt road, I watched this astounding twilight scene unfold, just after sunset.  A short-lived storm had formed over the Chiricahua Peak, tallest mountain in the range of the same name, as moist outflow air from an earlier convective event to the northeast was forced to rise upslope.   As that storm weakened and its cloud base … [Read more...]

Skeletons of the Frye Fire

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Lightning ignited the 2017 Frye fire, which burned a lot of acreage in the Pinaleno Mountains, nearly up to the observatory telescopes on Mt. Graham.  Conifer forests, overrun in intense crown-fire bursts, stand today only as skeletal trunks and branches.  Fitting it was, then, that on my visit here, a dying mountain thunderstorm with breaks of blue sky textured the scene overhead.  On this wet … [Read more...]

Young Storm in the Pinalenos

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I drove this lonely road—not the only one that I've ever known—leading to a young cumulonimbus rising off the southern part of the Mt. Graham massif, in eastern Arizona's Pinaleno Mountains.  When a storm blows up and poses like this, practically begging for photography, why not accommodate?  This was a rewarding storm-observing and shooting day, being able to experience this midday activity and … [Read more...]