Having lost all sense of time, in regards to what day it is or what time of day it is, I’m still “mining” the ton of pictures that I took on the eclipse trip to Texas earlier this month.
This panorama was taken from a rest stop in New Mexico, just to the east of Las Cruces, where I was about to head into that thunderstorm, which indeed did have high winds, lightning, thunder, heavy rain, and light hail. It was spectacular!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather
Two days back home and this weekend I’m going to try to go through the eclipse photos and see what’s good. There’s got to be at least one or two, right? Statistical fluctuations and all of that!
In the meantime, because I like pictures of clouds and storms and potentially violent weather, enjoy these pictures from Tuesday on the trip from Kerrville to Tucson.
Here are some mammatus clouds. They’re supposed to be a sign of particularly violent weather, the boiling bottom of a big thunderhead cell. (These were, no “supposed to be” about it.)
This panoramic view of a freaking huge thunderstorm supercell should have been like Gandalf standing there, blocking the road, bellowing, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” I passed anyway.
As for the eclipse photos that I need to sort through and clean up, I suspect that the videos might be better than the still photos. Mistakes were made.
On the other hand, remember the T-shirt that I was wearing? (Picture here.) I may crop that a little, find a place that does custom T-shirts, and have this image of me printed on there with a caption that says, “Hello DORKness, My Old Friend!” I mean, if the shoe fits!
Filed under Panorama, Paul, Photography, Travel, Weather
I had another post and pictures all set up and ready to go. Then the sun set.
Holy freakin’ guacamole, Batman!
If you’re lucky you might get one or two sunsets a year in this part of the world that are this colorful, saturated, vibrant, and amazing.
Tonight was that night. Complete with a thin, fingernail of a three-day old crescent moon in the upper left.
Neighbors were driving by and stopping to stare with us. And why not? If you see this going on and you don’t notice or don’t care, please check for a pulse!
This spectacular display went on for over ten minutes. I even had time to shoot some panoramas.
While the purples started to fade to black up high, the reds and oranges near the horizon just got brighter and more vibrant.
All things are transient, none so much as a sunset. The planet’s just going to keep on spinning, which in the big picture is probably a good thing.
One last gasp, then the stars started popping out. Jupiter came out just above the wires, over at the left edge of the picture. Orion is high up to the left, the easiest constellation to pick out. The Plieades cluster is close to the Moon. Somewhere out there is that comet I talked about yesterday.
Spectacular!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sunsets
Yet another one of those days when the forecast did not include rain. And yet…
Those are not puffy, happy, “fair weather” clouds. If those are in the Midwest, there are tornado warning sirens going off.
And it stretched across a good stretch of the sky. 30 seconds later it was raining pretty hard.
Not nearly as hard as it was raining to the east of us where that BIG storm was.
And when it was over…
It wasn’t a full rainbow. Over to the right it was black as night as that thunderstorm had moved a bit south. But to the north, for a minute…
Yeah. It’s that whole “hope” thing.
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather
I was looking for a random photo and I realized that I haven’t shared a panorama in forever. Time to fix that.
Click on it – I’m giving you the full-sized, uncompressed file here.
Central Park, seven and a half years ago.
(Still raining here, but I think we’re near the end of this storm. Probably another in a week or so – El Niño FTW!!)
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel, Weather
Up in the mountains and high desert (not so much down here in the LA Basin and the valleys that are close to the ocean) humidity (monsoonal moisture) plus heat (over 100ºF today) gives rise to thunderstorms. So today to our north, toward Mt Pinos and the Coastal Range (on the left), the Grapevine (center) and the Antelope Valley (on the right), we saw this:
(It’s a good sized image – click on it to see it full sized!)
The big threat for the next few days however is from the south, off of Baja. Tropical Storm Hilary is building off of Cabo San Lucas and is expected to be a full-blown hurricane tomorrow. It’s expected to travel more or less due north off of Baja until it slams into Southern California and Arizona over the weekend.
It’s all still three or four days out so who knows what the weather gods will actually deliver – just based on our luck, we’ll get missed entirely and Las Vegas and Phoenix will get flooded. Still, the current model from NWS Los Angeles says we’ll get somewhere between 2-5 inches of rain, so I’m hopeful.
Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography, Weather
(Click to enlargenate!)
The winter solstice was about seven hours ago. Tomorrow, in the Northern Hemisphere, the daylight will last for a few seconds longer. South of the equator, the days will start getting shorter.
For us in the north, the light returns, the cycle repeats, the journey moves onward.
Filed under Astronomy, Panorama, Photography, Sunsets
Unseasonably warm, bright lights, nice crowds, ill-advised life decisions that made perfect sense forty years ago…
Fun times!
Filed under Christmas Lights, Panorama, Photography
From Saturday.
(Click it – blow it up.)
The full moon and Jupiter on the far left, LA City Hall lit up in red, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion center left, the fountains in the Music Center Plaza, and the Mark Taper Forum.
The search for the “forever home” is on and unless there’s a lottery jackpot out there, Los Angeles is out.
But I will miss this and its like.
Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography
Okay, we’re not going to write that one. Not a good night after a long Monday to rip that psychic bandaid off in public.
So then the freakin’ muse (bitch!) pushes us to write THAT one. Um, a couple hundred words in … NO! I don’t care how much I like that song and how it inspires and it’s probably something I need to write sooner rather than later. Not. Today.
No new lizard pictures? No, Gandalf was out there again and still on duty, but I didn’t have my phone or a camera with me. (Okay, so that’s burying the lede! I didn’t have my phone with me??!!)
So what’s Plan C?
I took hundreds of pictures in Chicago, there must be something that I haven’t already posted, right? Here, have a panorama from downtown on Wacker Drive, just across the street from our hotel, next to the river on the right.
Mañana, y’all.
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 