Category Archives: Weather

This is from a week or so ago. While we’ve had our share of spectacular sunsets with orange & pink & purple & cotton candy clouds in the last month, this particular sunset was much more restrained and tame.

Off to the east was pretty much just this one big cloud, a nice pink-ish, orange-ish hue, with an interesting lecticular structure.

What made is special was that it was quite obvious that you could see the cloud’s shadow stretching out behind it, projected on the background haze in the air.

You can see this effect in pictures from Low Earth Orbit or the International Space Station, but it’s usually less noticeable from the ground.

I thought it was cool! (But, as my high school friend Keven MacNamara pointed out over fifty years ago, I am easily amused.)

As usual, sunset-ish, filling the bird feeders, when WOWSERS!!

The picture doesn’t do it justice, it was bright! And it lasted for at least 15-20 minutes, much longer than normal.

This is where it’s coming from – the Sun in the clear as it set, with some scattered clouds dropping virga for the final rays of sunshine to shine through.

As I was working, and looking at that rainbow over the wall, the hummers were active, buzzing me as I stood near their feeder.

Finally the Sun broke through and started illuminating the nearby water tanks and power lines, while still leaving the rainbow and some drifting sheets of rain.

The rainbow was small when viewed as part of the big picture, but the whole thing with the bright blue sky and bright white clouds with the band of color streaking across it all. With hummingbirds.

I’ve shared plenty of photos of the western sky at sunset, either because it was aflame and spectacular and awesome, or because it had planets and the Moon in it, or both. But the view to the east during those same moments is also gorgeous, if somewhat more sublime.

Directly behind us to the east are row upon row of empty, graded lots for parts of our subdivision that were never finished. That’s a whole long and interesting story to begin with, no doubt to be discussed another day as it seems some developer has bought the empty land and plans of building there in 2027. We’ll see. Beyond that are these three huge water tanks that turn the most subtle shades of pink and orange at sunset. And the power lines coming up from the Mesa and the Cajon Pass. Beyond them, the mountains, dominated by the triple-peaked Pinnacles and the mountains heading up into the Mojave Desert. All purple-ish at this time of the dusk.

More to the northeast tonight there were layers of clouds heading up toward Barstow, the higher ones still almost still white but getting the lightest tinge of pink, with the lower, closer clouds already entering into night’s shadow, with every shade and level of illumination in between. And more power lines and water tanks and vacant lots. Welcome to the southwest corner of Hesperia!

It does make a most lovely, pastel backdrop for refilling the bird seed feeders!

Ridden hard…

…and put away wet!