Often they show up on both sides of the Sun – today there was just the one on the right side.
Rainbows from sunlight off of ice crystals.
The right angles, the right temps, the right atmospheric conditions, and BINGO! The entire visible spectrum from red to violet, spread across a cloud!
Filed under Photography, Weather
Last night’s second picture showed clouds to the south over the Cajon Pass – I didn’t think anything of it. I took the photos, came home and downloaded them, wrote my post, hit the “publish” button.
Not ten minutes later the whole house shook with a massive peal of thunder right overhead. There had been 0% chance of rain, no mention of any clouds or storms at all. But for the next hour we had quite the little pop-up thunderstorm.
I might have just loved it.
Tonight the clouds were still hanging around, making comet viewing impossible again, but we did get some gorgous crepuscular rays at sunset.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather
Okay, so it was more like the National Weather Service than some old crone with a crystal ball or a wizard with a Palantir, but still.
The rain was steady, hard at times, but nothing in the Forever Home leaks, which is good! It was the cold outside that was noticeable – it never even made it to 50ºF.
And yes, the heat in the house DOES work. Still not sure WHERE the furnace or heating equipment is, but fans turn on, warm(er) air comes out of the vents, and the temperature inside slowly creeps up a degree or two.
The other thing that I realize now is that there are three separate gas fireplaces, including one in the master bedroom and one in the living room. It’s not that I didn’t know they were there, and both of our two previous houses had them, but we never USED them. They’re there to hang Christmas decorations and Chiefs flags on! But we’ve tested all of the ones here and know they work – I guess in a pinch they’ll heat up a couple of rooms, right?
Yeah, I know. I’m a clueless doof. This is not news.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather
It’s one thing to “know” that the temperature & weather swings are more extreme in the desert – it’s quite another to live here for a while and feel it. While the summer was fairly mild (I think we only had a handful of days that got into triple digits instead of dozens and dozens), now it’s autumn and we’re getting that large and unusually cold storm moving in. The high temperature today was only 58ºF today, and as we speak it’s only 48ºF outside. Tomorrow’s high is only supposed to be about 51ºF, with an inch or more of rain.
In anticipation of there being a lot of cold, wet, miserable, and hungry birds tomorrow, I made sure that all of the feeders were topped off tonight, just as the front of the storm and the first rain started.
The Forever Home does as good of a job staying warm in the chill as it does staying chill in the heat. It’s nippy, but we haven’t had to turn on the heat yet. Which got me to thinking – where’s the furnace? I know that the two thermostats have “heat” settings as well as “cool” settings, and I know that there are two A/C units outside. Are those heat pumps? Are there furnace units built into the A/C units? Are there furnace units on the roof or in the attic? I know what the furnace looks like and where it was located in a closet-like enclosure in our last two houses, but I haven’t seen anything at all like that here.
New home ownership! It’s an adventure! I guess when the time comes I’ll switch the thermostat on and see if hot air comes out of the vents. Assuming it will, I can listen for new sounds to see if I can identify the source.
Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Weather
When we had some unexpected showers (and rainbows!) on Thursday, this was the view from my office window when I was suprised by the sound of rain hitting the screens:
In about 48 hours a not-so-unexpected storm should hit and last for a couple days. It’s big enough to be a major story in the local news, online, and we’re starting to get Flash Flood Warnings about it already. It’s apparently also supposed to be a cold storm, so while our first snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains normally isn’t until November or even December, this one could drop decent amounts at higher elevations all the way to the Oregon border and beyond. That works for me – that’s where all of our water comes from and a healthy snowpack is always good news.
We’re not likely to get snow here from this storm. We *DO* get snow every now and then most winters, since we’re at 3,588 feet and the snow level often drops to 3,000 feet or lower. But not this time. The snow level’s only supposed to be down to about 6,500 feet. There are however several peaks off on the horizon that go up to 10,000 or more (Mount San Antonio, “Old Baldy” is just to the left of the view in this picture, visible between the houses to the southwest, and it goes up to 10,068 feet) and they’re likely to all get snow.
I’m looking forward to the pictures late next week after the storm moves through!
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather
We had unexpected showers off and on all day. At least, they were unexpected to me, the weather folks might have seen them coming.
We had our third pretty good shower going on and I suddenly saw sunlight through my west-facing office windows. I know what that math adds up to, so I headed to the east-facing wall.
It was spectacular!
The light leaking through the clouds was extremely bright on the left side, with just a hint of the outside arc.
The clouds were still nasty, and there were some fascinating effects as sheets of rain drifted in and out of the sunbeams.
This little dude kept popping up over the wall and getting into my face, since I was standing next to the feeder it wanted. There were three other feeders available, so I didn’t feel like I was putting it out too much, but it obviously disagreed.
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather
Yesterday I shared a couple of time-lapse videos of the clouds building overhead.
Not all of these attempts to record videos were successful.
I’m just happy that the phone, which was perched on top of the brick wall at the back of the yard, didn’t fall down over the wall to the other side. It would have been recoverable, there’s just a vacant lot there, but I would have had to walk around the block to get it. And it likely would have broken. With a new house to pay for, I don’t need to spend $2,000 on a new iPhone 17, as much as I might have “phone lust” for one.
Perhaps not a perfect day – that would require lightning, thunder, some towering thunderheads, a downpour or two, maybe some hail… But given the lack of any actual precipitation, today wasn’t bad at all!
Looking to the south, maybe a little bit southwest, with the Sun be-bopping in and out of the clouds.
Looking to the northeast, with the clouds racing past. In all of the single-frame chaos you can also see flashes of the dozens of birds at the feeders since they all got refilled this morning.
Filed under Forever Home, Video, Weather
Is this the high desert Bat-signal?
It looked like it at the time.
Filed under Photography, Weather
Yesterday I was working and knew that there were light off & on showers about, but I heard the thunder as my first sign that something more substantial was near.
It wasn’t quite overhead and we never got a real downpour or hard rain from it, but the rumbling announced its presence with authority!
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather
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