Category Archives: Weather

March 31, 2024 · 23:30

Eclipse Minus Seven Days

Doomscrolling through the weather sites…

Too many of the predictions are pointing toward something that looks a lot like our front yard in SoCal this evening. For example,

(Plot by Tomer Burg, arctic.som.ou.edu)

This is the “GEFS Downward Shortwave Radiation” prediction. I won’t pretend to really understand what all of that means, except grey means bad and blue means good, and where I’m headed is the second darkest shade of grey. And there are dozens and dozens of different models, different agencies, different colors, different data sets – they’re all pointing the same way.

This prediction was generated ten days out from the event, so it’s going to change, possibly by a significant amount, but likely not by a ton. The details will get more refined for all of those exact locations, but in broad strokes, it’s looking a lot like there are going to be significant clouds along 90% of the eclipse path, all the way from Mexico to the Great Lakes.

We knew this was a possibility. I am very surprised to see so much of the eclipse path covered in clouds. Normally I would expect a couple of storms possible, which means maybe driving toward the Mexican border or up toward Arkansas. But needing to drive all the way to eastern Ohio???!!!

It will be what it will be. You’ll hear me saying that a lot in the next ten days. Barring some disaster I’ll be in Texas next Friday, spend the weekend there watching the forecast and going over options, then taking our best shot on Monday. I have no control over the weather.

Say goodbye to March, friends! It could have been worse, but it sure could have been better as well. Let’s hope that April finally cuts us some slack, especially with the cloud cover on the afternoon of April 8th!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Weather

March 29, 2024 · 23:35

Ripples

The forefront of yet another weekend storm. Yet again we’re expected to get 3″ or more of rain (which is a LOT for SoCal if you’re not up in the mountains) and we’re under flash flood and high wind warnings through the weekend.

I haven’t really been keeping track, but now that I’ve noticed it, haven’t we had rain on the weekends like four or five weekends in a row, or five of the last six, or something like that? I like the rain and we need it to get rid of a several-year-long drought, but what happened to “sunny SoCal”?

That’s it! I’m leaving! I’M GOING TO GO TO TEXAS! (Well, later this week at least. I need to check into my hotel for the eclipse on Friday.)

 

 

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Filed under Photography, Weather

March 24, 2024 · 23:23

A Storm In Five Pictures

When I went out to get the Sunday morning groceries and pick up breakfast it was clear as a bell. I didn’t even take a picture (imagine that!) because it was just…blue. Lots and lots of blue.

15:54 – I was squirreled away in my office for several hours after that until all of a sudden the cable signal on all channel got interrupted with one of those emergency weather alerts for a dangerous thunderstorm with potential hail, wind, lightning, and local flooding. It was off in the San Gabriel Valley, sixty miles to our east, but a quick check of the radar showed that the one sparking the alert was just the worst of four or five thunderstorm cells drifting about, and one of them was close to us.

16:59 – One of the cells was very close to Dodger Stadium and Downtown LA, with the Angels playing the Dodgers in the first of the Freeway Series spring training games. Here I could hear occasional thunder and there were a couple of quick, moderate showers, but no real rain – yet.

17:37 – Now it’s raining, and raining pretty good. More thunder, but out in the front yard, looking west, there’s the sun shining through the broken edge of the the thunderstorm cell. It’s quite the spectacle with the heavy rain being backlit by the bright Sun. I ran out to the back yard to see if we might get a spectacular rainbow, but we struck out on that. A couple of miles away there were reports of medium-sized hail and heavier showers, but we just got grazed by the edge of the cell.

19:11 – We get more alerts about “our” thunderstorm cell being a danger to mariners out over Santa Monica Bay to our south where it’s drifted, but off to the north we’ve just got a lot of broken clouds and a highly unstable atmosphere. This however is great for getting a spectacular sunset. With more rain directly west of us, the normal view we have of the pink and golden clouds behind the grove of silhouetted palm trees is grey and gloomy and dark, but looking to the side from the back yard it’s bright and colorful.

19:14 – Behind us to the east, peeking in and out of all of the broken clouds and scattered thunderstorm cells, the 99.9% full moon is rising. Fourteen days to the eclipse. Ready or not…

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

March 23, 2024 · 23:37

WOW Clouds

It was raining this morning (as predicted) when I got up, but cleared up in the early afternoon. There was actually some sun showing, and I could hear the now resident red-shouldered hawk screaming out in the trees. I went out and was looking off to the north and east for the hawk. Something caught my eye and I turned back to the south.

WOW! This layout across the sky, this composition, this mixture of forms and shadows and various shades of white and sunlight… WOW!

I understand that there’s a huge mix here of cirrus clouds and stratus clouds and some building cumulonimbus clouds and so on. But all together? “WOW clouds.”

I grew up in Kansas for a while, saw lots of HUGE thunderstorms, even a tornado or two, and I do dearly love seeing and experiencing that kind of violent weather. But there’s a lot of simple joy in suddenly turning around and seeing a 360º panorama like this.

Simple pleasures, folks. Don’t ignore them.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

March 21, 2024 · 23:38

Foggy

It was. Cold and clammy this morning, but quiet. Mystical.

With the city and the mountains and canyon gone it was easy to imagine that there was just us on an island in the clouds.

For all of the (missing) video & audio clues that I’m used to, I could have been atop a mountainous spire in some fantasy novel.

Even the birds were quiet and not flying about. I guess mourning doves are VFR rated only. Who knew?

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Filed under Photography, Weather

March 20, 2024 · 23:52

Literally Two Seconds Later

More unexpected, widely scattered, pop-up thunderstorms. Nothing heavy near us, but I was out on the front yard and this was looking threatening.

Literally two seconds later, the first of many drops started slamming into the back of my head.

I suspect if you zoom in far enough on this picture you can see a million or so not-so-tiny drops, falling at terminal velocity, targeting my skull like Nature’s own soggy cruise missiles!

I ran for the house. Fortunately, I was designed to be drip-dry.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

March 15, 2024 · 23:07

Night Clouds Redux

In the middle of watching the hockey game tonight (it was good, Kings 5-0 over the Blackhawks) we got a blaring warning emergency alert, followed by the robot voice synthesizer from the National Weather Service warning about severe weather, up to and including hail, thunderstorms, and a possible tornado. WTAF?!

We didn’t get more than a few drops here, most of the action was east of Downtown LA and in the San Gabriel Valley, all thirty to fifty miles to our east. (Southern California’s a big place.)

By late tonight, the leftover remnants were over us, and with the quarter moon (that bright spot in the lower right) lighting them up from above and the light pollution from the city lighting them up from below, they looked pretty cool!

The big takeaway lesson for the evening, however, was that it’s so much harder to get down on the ground and then back up to my feet than I remember it being when I was younger. This sucks! (For the record, I was laying down on my back on the patio to try to stabalize my arms when holding my phone to take these 10 second exposures, rather than just walking inside the house to get one of the dozen or so tripods I have… Okay, so, the true takeaway is that I’m an idiot, but that’s not exactly news now, is it?)

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Uncategorized, Weather

March 7, 2024 · 23:35

Ominous

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.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

March 6, 2024 · 23:24

Fine Feathered Friends – March 06th

What a pleasant surprise today! I was taking a quick break and grabbing a soda in the kitchen when I saw something large-ish going through the pine trees on the slope beyond the back yard. It wasn’t any mourning dove, much larger, some sort of raptor. I grabbed a camera and headed out into the rain.

I figured that it had just been passing through and I might see it circling over the canyon someplace. It was rainy and starting to close in so I didn’t see anything in the sky. Suddenly my pattern recognition kicked in and I realized that this guy was sitting right there, staring at me.

After I got a couple of pictures from the back yard, I decided to see if the hawk would sit still while I went down the stairs to the “lower level.” To my surprise and delight, it did! Although it was giving me some serious stink eye.

I was still maybe 20-25 feet away and about even with it, although if I had tried to go over to the tree it was in I would have been 30 feet below it. That hill is steep. I guess it decided that I was mostly harmless. (I am! Mostly…)

By this point the rain was coming down steadily and while the hawk was looking all over, it didn’t seem too happy about the meteorological conditions.

What kind of hawk is it? It’s a mystery, sort of. I ran four different pictures through the Merlin Bird ID app (from Cornell Lap, get it!) and all four said it might be a Cooper’s Hawk or a Red-shouldered Hawk. In either case it’s probably a juvenile, but that’s more likely if it’s a Red-shouldered Hawk. That’s my bet, simply because the Cooper’s Hawks that I’ve seen up close have solid brown or tan chests, where these patterns are more like the Red-shouldered Hawks. I could have positively ID it if it had sounded off, their calls are much different. But not a peep was heard.

I expected it to fly off any second, but it just sat there. After about fifteen minutes I was more wet than I really liked, and I had the option of going inside. I came back out an hour later and it was still sitting there, which I found really surprising. But it was gone a half-hour after that.

I shot a couple minutes of video while waiting and hoping it would either sound off, fly away, or both. No joy on all counts, but it’s a gorgeous creature!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography, Video, Weather

March 4, 2024 · 23:48

Yet Another Picturesque SoCal Sunset

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.

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather