Category Archives: Weather

September 18, 2025 · 22:01

Peering Through The Layers

We again had a bit of weather pass through today. Nothing too violent or wet, although there were showers and some thunder heard.

By sunset it was broken clouds, with multiple layers at different altitudes, with holes here and there, so I could watch different layers fly by in different directions and speeds.

Best of all was the view where, while it was just past sunset here, off to the east probably 25-30 miles there were thunderheads towering up over the horizon, brightly lit in brilliant white.

Then in just a few minutes (4 minutes between pictures to be exact) that blinding white started to turn pink and orange. (No extra charge for the blurry hummingbird zipping by on the right – it was pissed that I was standing next to its favorite feeder.)

My vision of a boring, hot, windy, unchanging weather environment have (fortunately) been disproven by three fascinating rain storms in less than two months.

Variety *IS* the spice of life!

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

September 5, 2025 · 23:38

Big Things Over The Horizon

It was a nice day here (aside from the small brush fire that they stomped on pretty quickly with a half dozen aircraft and kept to about 33 acres) but out in the desert late in the day there were a couple of odd, big, convective cells building up.

This was off to the northeast, up toward Barstow. Probably at least 40 or 50 miles away, but the cloud tops at 15,000 to 20,000 are impressive.

When we got past sunset here but the cloud tops were still lit, it got better.

There was another big group of cells down toward Palm Springs.

This extremely large, round object was also seen coming up, moving in its orbit toward a full lunar eclipse on Sunday (which we won’t see at all here – enjoy it in Asia, India, Africa, and Australia!).

Once everything on the ground started turning pink, it had risen above the mountains, clouds, and haze to become a bright, white beacon.

Leave a comment

Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

August 25, 2025 · 22:51

Lobbing Up Softballs

Another atmospherically unstable day with a huge stream of monsoonal moisture coming up all the way from the Gulf of California to past Las Vegas. We didn’t get any rain here, but it was cool, breezy, and we could see the thunderheads building around us in every direction. A number of places like Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and Barstow had flash flood warnings out.

Comes sundown, and everything’s pink and orange and red and purple, different layers of clouds with different levels and color of illumination, being pushed by the wind in different directions. I’ve gotta find the tripods and unpack them, it would have been amazing as a time-lapse video.

I don’t want to be a one-trick pony on this site with only pictures of clouds and sunsets, but we don’t have that many birds or lizards or flowers yet, so if the Universe is going to lob up softballs with sights like this right outside my front door, I’m gonna swing for the fences! Needless to say, it’s a “busier than god” time at work, I’m still unpacking, I still haven’t caught up on sleep (by an order of magnitude) lost over the past eight weeks, so if I need something quick for the day and this is available…

Get real!

There’s a whole new world out there to explore, and I’m looking forward to getting out there and going hiking and up into the mountains and up toward Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead and looking for trains and a gazillion other new sights and experiences. And I promise, lots of pictures from all of those adventures! But for today, wallow in the stunning sunsets.

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

August 23, 2025 · 23:22

First Rain

I am a god! Zeus, apparently! I can trigger lightning!

It’s easy! When we get a thunderstorm nearby, I turn on my cell phone camera trying to capture video of lightning. There will be no lighting to be seen for the entire time that I’m recording. However, within two seconds of ending the recording, lighting will strike right in the middle of the frame! It happened multiple times today. I can trigger lightning! I am Zeus!

It remains to be seen if I can cause lightning to appear on command (or lack of a command) out of a clear, blue sky. If I can… Let’s just say that there’s a list, and there will be signs that I have a new toy to play with.

I got up this morning to find not just a few scattered clouds, but complete overcast with some nasty, dark, low clouds moving in from the southwest. The weather radar was showing light showers down over the “Inland Empire” areas of the LA metro area, which were turning into convective cells (i.e., thunderstorms) as they were pushed up the mountains and got heated over the desert.

The weather app also said we had a 55% chance of rain today – that couldn’t be right!!

An hour later, I was sure that I was hearing thunder. For a reason, it turns out.

We had two separate thunderstorm cells near us, one to the west, and one to the southeast. Based on the timing between the lightning flashes and the thunder arriving, this was about three and a half miles away and coming straight at us.

I moved a chair out into the back yard, started watching the thunderstorm and rain, watching the four or five hummingbirds that were feeding at our two feeders, and listening to the trains from two different lines running past our house on either side. The Long-Suffering Wife referred to me as being “in hog heaven,” and she’s not wrong.

This went on for the better part of an hour, after which it moved on toward Barstow and parts north.

I know for many you who have weather like this on a regular basis, my reaction sounds overblown and hyperbolic. But we don’t get this sort of activity often. In LA, while we might have eight or ten or a dozen rainy days a year (maybe), we would only get more violent weather like this once every several years. It’s slightly more common up here in the desert, but not much. To get it out of nowhere with little or no warning just a month after moving up here is quite a treat!

LET ME HAVE MY JOY!

There were more New Forever Home Firsts (NFHFs) later in the day. I saw our first squirrel up on the brick wall in the back yard. (Coincidentally, I also put up the first birdseed feeder near that wall earlier today, but he didn’t seem aware of it and never went near. Concidence, or timing?) I also saw our first fence lizard, a decent-sized (8 inches maybe?), all black critter skittering along the back wall toward a row of planters in that back corner.

Finally, there were some interesting tidbits that may point to a most interesting first-time realization about our new house. At the height of the storm, about 10:45, the Virtual Railfan webcam that’s less than a mile away went off the air. Folks were talking about the power being out as SC Edison cut power in a lot of places due to the wind and lightning, in an attempt to minimize the chances of starting a brush fire is something went wrong. And when we went out to dinner, the restaurant was closed (no power?) and we saw a couple of traffic lights that were out or had been out.

So all signs point to a reasonably widespread power outage from about 10:45 to 17:00. Were we lucky that we never lost power or noticed any problem at all? Well, if you think it’s “lucky” that we have a whole slew of solar power panels on the roof…

Not a blip, not an iota of problems with our A/C, computers, lights, refrigerators, cable, internet, etc…

Yet another reason we’re both really liking this house!

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Video, Weather

August 22, 2025 · 22:02

Forever Home – Close Of Escrow Plus One Month

You’ll recall that we closed escrow on Tuesday, July 22nd and started moving in – it’s been a month now. While we’re making progress, I continue to be astonished by how little my expectations and perceptions of reality actually match up to real reality in the sense that every single freakin’ facet of this entire process of packing, moving, and unpacking takes so, so, SOOOOO much longer than I expect it to. In terms of just functioning (i.e., sleeping and moving and walking and that sort of thing) I continue to be way “behind the plane” and it’s making me nuts. (“Behind the plane” refers to flying and how as a pilot you want as much as possible to be in control, proactive instead of reactive, and anticipating what you’re going to need and do next BEFORE you get there. You want to be ahead of the plane, not be behind it. Many things in life have the same lesson apply.)

Today I could see some convective activity off to the north and east, out where I-15 heads up to Barstow and on to Las Vegas. I know that at times there can be some big thunderstorms building up out here – I’m really looking forward to that. I love watching thunderstorms. (Safely.) Nothing too near to us today, but the weather radar apps were showing a few lightning strikes out there.

In the month we’ve been here, I think it’s the little things that are different that are adding up. The lineup of TV channels is all different. At both the Pomelo house (35+ years) and the Scarborough Peak house (7+ years) we had the same cable company and the same channel lineup. If you travel, of course it’s different in your hotel room, but that’s always temporary, just a day or two, maybe a week. Now, about two weeks in, it hits you that it’s different and that’s the way it’s gonna be forever.

And it’s not just which order the channels are in. There are a lot more of the “holy roller,” fundamentalist televangelist networks here, and where in LA they were buried off in the middle of thousands of channels, here they’re right up front in the first dozen or so. Lots and lots of screaming assholes who I would really, really like to see following Dobson sooner rather than later. Can I get a discount if I block all of them? More to the point, is there an option to pay more and have all of them blocked at the source?

Aside from that, there are a lot more channels showing nothing but hour after hour of old reruns from the 1950’s and 1960’s and 1970’s, and most of them are in the lower, “prime” channels as well. I guess I’m not the target demographic.

With all of that said, one thing that I expected but have seen very little of is the open, fanatical, cult following of MAGAts. I know of one house a couple miles away that I’ve seen have a Trump flag. That’s it. I haven’t seen anyone doing the fully-armed, open carry, 2A cult thing, and I haven’t even seen any vehicles covered in right-wing bumper stickers and cult paraphanalia. It’s a relief to not (yet) be exposed that sort of toxic bullshit.

We’ll see what happens if/when that changes and I come face to face with that level of stupidity and hatred. I know it has to be out there. I suspect that despite a deeply ingrained discomfort with confrontation, I will have limited tolerance for entitled fools.

We can hope!

Overall, we’re doing well a month in. We both still love the new house, and while I had hoped for better on the pace of the transition, I’m learning to allow myself some grace and just do the best I can and not beat myself up when that best doesn’t meet (possibly questionable) expectations. We’re learning our way around town, we’re learning where the stores are, we’re starting our colony of hummingbirds, and I’m getting all of the change of address notices processed. I’ve got the autopay set up for the gas and mortgage and solar and water, and some days (not all!) I can actually find things I need instead of just going out and buying new. (I was working on payroll last week and ran out of printer paper late in the evening – I managed to scavange enough paper from three other printers combined to get through the task, but the next day we hit a Staples to get a couple more reams of paper, despite the fact that I know that SOMEWHERE in those PODS units there are two cases, 20 reams, of new paper. It’s no good to me if I can’t find it. “A bird in the hand…” and all of that.)

I hope all of you are doing well also.

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather

August 4, 2025 · 23:23

A Touch Of High-Level Moisture

It had been clear and a gazillion almost every day since we moved up here, except for that one morning when the sunrise was mind blowing. But tonight we finally got some beautiful, wispy clouds.

I’m finding that I really enjoy the “edges” of the day outside, in the morning before it gets too hot and in the evenings when it’s starting to cool off. Yeah, it’s hot here in the middle of the day, but there’s that whole “mad dogs and Englishmen” thing going on. Wait until just before sunset and go out in the breezes and it’s exceptional.

Turns out that laying out on the turf (house on the left, pergola on the right) is quite comfortable. Getting back up to my feet? I was worried we might need to call in a crane…

And it’s not true that we don’t get any airplanes passing overhead. While in West Hils we were under the extended final centerline for Burbank’s primary Runway Eight and thus had jets overhead constantly, we still get some traffic here. Click on that photo and blow it up as much as you can – do you see the Iberia A350, flight #03, headed from LAX to Madrid, 20,000 overhead?

Both to the south…

..and to the north we were right under the edge of a front of some sort, with lots of twisty, turny threads and ribbons of clouds.

But it’s all way up there at 30,000. No rain or precipitation expected here for the forseeable future.

But if I happen to be wandering around about 04:45, the sunrise might be beautiful.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Sunsets, Weather

June 14, 2025 · 23:40

Proof Of Life – June 14th

No, I didn’t attend any of the “No Kings” protests today, as much as I would have liked to. Other priorities, sadly. As noted before, this whole “responsible adult” thing sort of sucks, big time. Not a fan!

It would have been a nice day for it. First day in a few where it wasn’t either “clear and a million” with nothing but blue skies, or hazy and cloudy and grey.

The contrast was much nicer.

Philosophical point – doesn’t the classical description of Heaven sound incredibly boring and dull after about a week? Sure, having anything you want any time you want it with no stress, no worries, no pain, would be fantastic for a while. But for eternity? YAWN!!

Maybe Michael Schur and his team were correct.

Enough philosophy! Back to processing payroll!

Leave a comment

Filed under Paul, Photography, Politics, Weather

June 3, 2025 · 23:55

Rain Freckles

I wasn’t expecting rain today at all. No clue that it was in the forecast. So when it started, I double checked. It wasn’t in the forecast!

My first clue that there was weather in the area was the thunder and lightning showing up in the Friends of Big Bear Valley video feed. Outside, seventy miles away, it was moving in.

A few minutes later, the rain started here. It was a desert rain, HUGE drops hitting hard, but not a lot of them.

It was also really dry, extremely low humidity, so the drops hit and evaporated almost immediately, leaving the “rain freckles” effect for quite a while before it actually looked wet.

Leave a comment

Filed under Photography, Weather

May 26, 2025 · 21:49

A Horsie I Think

Still looking at clouds. I’m usually not that good about seeing shapes in them (for example, some of my finest work is pretty basic, at best) but this one just leapt out at me this evening.

It’s running from left to right, and its head is turned to look at me. See it? Tail, hooves, ears, butt?

Wait, aren’t horse butts called “withers?” Eeeehhhh! 🚨🚨🚨Wrong! 🚨🚨🚨 The shoulders, or highest point on the back, are the withers. So what is the back end called? Just horse butts?

If we’re going to buy a horse property for our Forever Home (we’re NOT!) I’m going to have to learn the lingo.

(It’s apparently “hindquarters,” and the high point of the hindquarters is called the “croup.”)

Leave a comment

Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

May 23, 2025 · 23:19

Caterpillar Cloud

I came out the front door just around sunset and started the exit rituals. I said hello to the mourning dove hiding in its nest above the door. I said howdy to the medium sized lizard  who was catching the last solar rays on the west-facing front porch. I dropped and gave it a couple of push ups for competition and recognition – it did more, but mine were bigger, so we called it a draw and it scurried off into the bushes.

Then I noticed the isolated and gorgeous catepillar-shaped cloud hanging up there in the sunset sky.

Timing is everything. While it wasn’t going to get pink or orange or truly SPECTACULAR, it was brilliantly white and fluffy and feathery in a darkening sky. It was well above average, and these days that’s worth paying attention to!

If only I had wings to go do barrel rolls around it, through it, touching it, feeling the cold moisture on my face.

But I don’t. *sigh*

Leave a comment

Filed under Paul, Photography, Sunsets, Weather