SkyPix

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

Supercell on the Range

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Striking off the Laramie Range foothills and an outflow boundary from an earlier storm, this supercell spun spectacularly across the rolling Wyoming rangeland as it directly approached our vantage. It was but one of many amazing sights gracing the tumultuous springtime sky on that magical day. 17 NNE Cheyenne WY (7 Jun 12) Looking N 41.343, -104.6446 … [Read more...]

Bar Pattern, Little Missouri River

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Ever shifting, no constancy at all, the evolving shapes and size of the sand and gravel bars on this Badlands-draining, High Plains river ensure this photo cannot be taken, ever again.  Geomorphology is a fluid-flow study, much like meteorology, but on a slower scale.  Best of all, meteorology influences it through the precipitation that drains and melts into this system and weaves the bars here … [Read more...]

Tough Day on the Trail

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Good thing this was in 2003 and not, say, 150 years earlier!  At this location, the Santa Fe Trail crosses U.S. 400 in southwestern Kansas.  It was hard enough traversing that pioneer path of promise and pestilence, under threats from hostile natives, more-hostile nonnative robbers, lack of water, rattlesnakes, and of course unexpectedly late or early winter weather, bracketing the withering … [Read more...]

Flickering Twilight Supercell

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Sometimes the demise of a long-lived, briefly tornadic supercell around sunset doesn't mean the end of a chase day.   We thought it would, having escaped south from the gusty and hail-filled demise of the Loyal/Kingfisher/Piedmont/west OKC storm, which itself dropped hailstones up to 5 inches across.  However, a new supercell formed quickly on an intersection between the old supercell's outflow … [Read more...]

Sea Foam

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Never the same as ever before nor ever again, swirling forms of foam on the ocean twist themselves into an infinite variety of shapes, shapes within shapes, and shapes still deeper.  I could have taken a thousand unique photos; but this among a few will suffice.  When I was a child, I sometimes would blow on a foamy cup of hot chocolate or bowl of soup to watch the fluid spin little cyclones and … [Read more...]

HP Drum

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This large supercell sported an intense, nearly circular, heavy-precipitation (HP) core of flooding rain and severe hail (reports to near 1.75-inch diameter).  Had there been a tornado in there, we couldn't have seen it safely, and HPs with drum-shaped cores like this rarely "recover" back to classic structure with better visibility.   As such, we soon left this big, dark mess for another storm to … [Read more...]