SkyPix

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

Blasting Belle Fourche

By

This deep, dark, fast-moving supercell had been going for over 150 miles, three hours and three states, but was cranking up to its most intense levels yet.  Channels of rain-cooled air from the forward flank can be seen readily at right, as cloud tracers rising off the ground at an angle, and into the back of the wall cloud, which was broadly but obviously rotating.   Unfortunate residents of … [Read more...]

Golden Great Plains

By

An unexpected blessing of a sunset scene continued to deepen over the High Plains, offering a protracted enchantment in the form of wondrous color and texture filling the eastern sky.  With shadowy clouds in the west, the storm's reflections illuminated the landscape enough that it came out in the photograph, no filter needed.  Large knuckle clouds (upper middle) continued to roll across and down … [Read more...]

Flank in the Twilight

By

Two days in a row, fast-moving supercells rolled out of southeastern Montana, across northeastern Wyoming, and  across the Belle Fourche and St. Onge areas in South Dakota.  The first, here, was later in the day, and visually spectacular at this site.   After the rear-flank gust front swept past, the storm briefly showed off this still-intense, deeply convective rear-flank updraft region, before … [Read more...]

Blue-Hour Thunderhead

By

This remarkable little storm complex got a more prolific with its CG lightning later, but I also enjoyed this phase, with sharply defined updraft pulses in varying stages of maturity, from oldest (right) to newest (left).  In the "blue hour", its internal light complemented the reflected twilight nicely, with the CG flash as a potent punctuation mark. 4 W Sharon Springs KS (4 Jun 22) Looking … [Read more...]

Sunset on the American Prairie

By

At the end of another storm day, as concludes many a day out on the High Plains, the sun sets with yet another unique, kaleidoscopic cloud arrangement.  Many places lay claim to consistently grand sunsets, including a lot with more water, mountains, and/or funding from chambers of commerce to build websites and print tourism brochures.  Yet right out here, on the American prairie, the sundowns go … [Read more...]

Flickering through Mammatus

By

High-amperage sparks tickled the mammatus-festooned underside of the anvil region trailing a departing thunderstorm complex in southern Oklahoma.   This activity didn't produce lightning profusely, once we found a place to stop and shoot, but the few discharges it had were much appreciated. 2 W Davis OK (15 May 22) Looking SSW 34.503, -97.155 … [Read more...]