SkyPix

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

New Mexico Mountain Multicell

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A late-season cold front and its easterly boundary-layer flow helped to move moisture from Gulf of Mexico through the gaps in mountains of west Texas and southern New Mexico, kickstarting the southwestern desert "monsoon" season a bit early, as June spilled into July.   After an essentially nonexistent wet season in 2020, 2021 would offer a long and productive summer of convection in New Mexico … [Read more...]

Three-Spark Boomer

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Within just a few seconds, three CGs popped the countryside along the New Mexico/Oklahoma state line.   The orientation of these flashes ensured a long report of thunder, as the nearest one sounded first, followed by the one behind it, then the one at left, all in a continuous cacophony of rumbles and booms across those High Plains.  The southeastward-moving storm had a peculiar tendency to stay … [Read more...]

Occlusion Attention: Part 3

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Getting ever more concerned that something tornadic was happening in the old, bent-back occlusion, I pulled out the zoom camera and started looking through its viewfinder, shooting, looking at the LCD, and looking directly with eyeballs.  All this effort and attention yielded strong suspicion, but never enough confidence and evidence to say yes, that's a tornado.  Some storms are just too chaotic … [Read more...]

Occlusion Attention: Part 2

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After this supercell's forward-flank core and rain foot shifted northward enough to see the rotating, deeply occluded wall cloud in the distance, I tried to pay very close attention to the area under it, while not losing track of the closer, main updraft base (also rotating, but very slowly at this point).  The slightly higher terrain, upon which the wind turbines sat, didn't help, nor did the … [Read more...]

Occlusion Attention: Part 1

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[Part 1 of 3] I could have titled this short series, "Lessons in Uncertainty in Storm Spotting", but that sounds too long, more like the title of a research paper or PowerPoint presentation.  On an uncommon "10% tornado enhanced risk" day for the High Plains of northeastern Colorado, many ingredients came together for a potential multiple-tornado event, including an anomalously rich fetch of … [Read more...]

Desert Dustiness

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First of four haboobs I intercepted and photographed on the 2021 desert-storm sojourn, this one was the earliest in the day and contained the least dust, but still made its grit-blowing presence known as it surged southward across the Phoenix area.   The area of outflow kicked off more outflow-producing cells between Buckeye and Gila Bend to the south, leading to a weirdly fantastic cloudscape … [Read more...]