SkyPix

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

Blast into the Grand Canyon

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Receding away from the viewer with height, disappearing ghostly into a dense rain core, this twilight blast struck the bottom part of a natural amphitheater in the Grand Canyon.  It proves that the tallest area is not always the top target for lightning!  Alternative channels (the dimmer forks) simply didn’t connect to ground charge before the bright one.  This flash made true a longstanding dream … [Read more...]

Furious Forks

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For about 15 minutes, this section of a line of storms produced a wickedly brilliant barrage of forked, cloud-to-ground strikes ahead of the main precipitation area, as it interacted with a fresh outflow boundary and evolved into an embedded supercell.   The step-leader branch that didn't quite make it to the ground (at left) was lit nicely by electricity that had surged up through the branch that … [Read more...]

Emergent Blum Tornado

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My first view of the Blum tornado was this:  a fat, tapered, rain-wrapped cone emerging from dense precip obscuration, in an old mesocyclone.  How long had this tornado existed before?  Even after the fact, it's hard to say, as in its early life cycle, there was little to damage.  I reported this to NWS Fort Worth right away, upon recognizing and gaining confidence in what this was.  The tornado … [Read more...]

Margerie Glacier Reflective

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Ice floes dot Glacier Bay from several sources, especially the tidal Margerie Glacier.  Ice flows thousands of feet downhill to this place, where it slowly calves off, rafts off and melts off.   The middle part of the glacial wall was quite fascinating and photogenic in its own right as we approached. 76 NW Hoonah AK (31 Jul 3) Looking SSE 59.044, -137.0409 … [Read more...]

Super Sidney Sunset

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As a train of mostly disorganized and structurally nondescript storms had paraded past, we "called off the chase" and had dinner in town, with an eye toward resuming the viewing in the later sunset hour.  Good thing we did!  The light behind the band of messy storms briefly shone a deep gold, warmed and diffused by several miles of intervening rain.  A few western meadowlarks braved the precip and … [Read more...]

High-Based Funnel

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Destructive interference from close-proximity development of numerous high-based storms kept substantial, large updrafts from taking root long enough to organize into sustained supercells on a day otherwise favorable in the parameter space.   This became readily apparent as we watched one small, high-based updraft after another race past in a train of convection, moving more with the midlevel flow … [Read more...]