Category Archives: Sunsets

This one is actually from a week or so ago – today was clear and “boring” as colors and clouds go.

This one didn’t start with a lot of color, but the clouds and definition in the structures was exceptional.

As always, the silhouetted palm trees were splendid.

We finally got to see a little bit of color.

And more shadows of cloud on cloud. So freakin’ gorgeous. Tell me, how often do you look for something like this in your busy life? If it’s happening, how often do you spend ten minutes just watching? If the answer to either question is “never,” you might need to re-evaluate your life choices.

We’re looking hard a houses up in the high desert someplace. The sunsets and sunrises there can be even more spectacular (see these, for example), but I hope I can find a place with a couple of palm trees to add some character to that horizon while the sky’s doing tricks.

I was fortunate this evening to get a quick heads up from a good friend that the sunset going on outside at the moment was “epic.”

She wasn’t wrong! It had been vascillating between damp, showers, rain, and downpours all day, but being back in “damp” mode (it’s raining again now) meant that some sunlight was getting through.

Then, about two minutes later, these spectral vapors just materialized out of thin air.

The air was saturated with moisture, cool, and apparently right on the edge of condensation into clouds.

Some small eddy or disturbance, probably with a breeze coming up the canyon and getting some lift, cooling and spinning just a bit, caused these to puff into visibility.

A stray late sunset, pink and orange ray of sunlight found a hole and poked through like a spotlight, catching them against the dark background of the thicker, unlit clouds off in the distance.

Knowing what causes it doesn’t make it any less spectacular. (But all of those stupid wires!)

So I ran down the hill to the spot where I watch SpaceX launches out of Vandenberg, free from wires. Those couple of minutes cost me in terms of less color and sunlight, but the two wraiths were still lit.

Barely! Between the sunlight fading and the disturbance that had caused them dying out, they were vanishing, the visible moisture evaporating and being absorbed back into the air as equilibrium with the surrounding local atmosphere was reestablished.

And then it was gone. Almost – I caught just the slightest trace of color to the left of that palm tree crown. (And then I had to climb back up that hill to get home!)

EPIC! Indeed.

For two days or more we’ve had long bands of rain coming up from the south off of the ocean and streaming up into Ventura and Santa Barbara. This happens as the low rotates and the cloud bands spin around it.

First thing this morning the convective activity was building up over Ventura as the Sun heated up the humid, unstable air.

Directly overhead was this ugly, dark thing and when I heard thunder I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, so I went inside rather than get fricaseed by one jillion electron volts.

Later I went out to get the trash cans and saw these twin thunderstorm cells. It looks like they’re over the coast out in Ventura County.

Close enough. What was really interesting was that when the radar was put into motion, all of these cells were now moving almost due north to due south, the exact opposite of how they’ve been moving earlier in the week. Not surprising to anyone who’s gone through a direct hit by a hurricane, but unusual to see it this graphically demonstrated in this part of the world. The center of the low had moved inland to our east and we were now on the opposite side of that circular rotation.

By sunset it was getting mostly clear and the gradient at the horizon was lovely, but there were still enough clouds out there showing a touch of pink coloring to make it spectacular.

It looks like we’ll have a dry-ish Christmas, then another system comes through at the end of the week before New Year’s Day. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game. I think that’s against the law!