SkyPix

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

Second Warm-Frontal Tornado

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[Part 2 of 3]  The second of three quick-succession tornadoes produced by this warm-frontal supercell started three minutes after the demise of the first, in the same mesocyclone, but with an obvious gap in space and time.  Here shown at its most robust, mature stage, it exhibited evidence of vortex sheathing (inner and outer vortex tubes).  The low cloud base made these tornadoes look bigger than … [Read more...]

Warm-Frontal Multivortex

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[Part 1 of 3] Shivering in howling easterlies with a measured temperature of 61 degrees F, this is not normally the scene that would come to mind:  the bowl-shaped condensation funnel of a mature tornado, with sporadic subvortices swirling beneath.  Yet there we were, and that it was.  The parent supercell was the "Tail-End Charlie" of three that formed south of a warm front in the Dalhart, TX to … [Read more...]

Sky Feast at the Weather Center

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Wild sunset skies greeted us on the back side of an extensive thunderstorm complex, as filaments of "anvil crawler" lightning sliced through the trailing precipitation region.  All of this, amidst one of those wondrous "red rainbow" sunsets, made for a festival of fascinating weather elements in the sky, for that brief break of time when I could step out to behold and appreciate. Norman OK (27 … [Read more...]

Rotation, Rotation, Rotation

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Representing spin at many scales, this west-central Texas scene contains a striking, broadly rotating supercell, with classically striated cloud skirt and deep updraft towers tilted to the upper right.  Below that, a wall cloud rapidly spun, and its conical tornado, much faster still.  Meanwhile, wind turbines whirled uninhibited in the inflow region of this storm, which passed just a few miles to … [Read more...]

Orange Turbulence

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Outflow layered upon outflow as a newer, elevated storm (with core at left) developed over the cold pool left behind a messy supercell, whose flanking base can be see above the horizon.  For just a minute or two, as the last of the sun's daily rays streamed through an unseen western cloud break, the turbulent cloud base of the nearer storm caught the light and used it to texture the eastern sky … [Read more...]

Spiked Glacier

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You could say this tidal glacier "spiked the drink" whenever it calved into the bay.  Sharp prongs of ice, tens of feet high, told tales of buckling, shearing and erosion as the mass descended from the high Fairweather Range of coastal southeastern Alaska. 76 NW Hoonah AK (31 Jul 3) Looking S 59.0453, -137.054 … [Read more...]