It does this in Southern California. First there’s “May Gray,” followed by “June Gloom.” Then it will be 104° in the shade and we’ll burn.
Wait for it.
Category Archives: Weather
The Sun For A Minute
The day, she was chilly and damp and cloudy. It didn’t matter that much since I was indoors with no windows, trying to make the best of my one regular day per week at the hangar. All of those number things and bank things and statement things and moths in the purse things, don’cha know.
When I was getting ready to leave, having assumed that it had gotten dark long before (it was a loooooong day playing catch up) I was surprised to see that the setting sun had finally found a way to peek out from under the persistent cloud deck. It probably had to go all the way past Santa Barbara to do it, but there it was.
As it got closer to the horizon, a bit more illumination crept through and showed that the clouds were actually breaking up just a touch.
I wanted to boogie home, but before I left I walked out to the edge of the taxiway for the pig bicture.
(As always, click on the image to get the full-sized version.)
Filed under CAF, Panorama, Photography, Weather
Heart Of The Cutoff Low
“Heart Of The Cutoff Low” is going to be my new Don Henley tribute band.
Remember the leading edge of the low pressure system that gave us such pretty clouds two days ago? That system is now parked over us for the second day in a row and doesn’t look like it will move out until Sunday or Monday.
Tomorrow’s going to be a bit of a mudder. (No context for you!)
From the parking garage at sunset, pretty much every direction looked ominous. (There’s not THAT much rain in this system, it just looks cool.)
To the west. I actually did get a little bit of rain on the drive home and the trash cans had an inch or so of rain it them. (It was trash day and the lids get left open when the automated truck picks them up and flips them.)
To the north. There’s that big hospital-like-looking building over there, I wonder if I know anyone there?
To the east. Way off in the distance, just poking up over the hill are some big cells firing up, bringing some thunderstorms to the desert.
Not good flying weather. At least two Southwest Air flights from Burbank to Las Vegas were cancelled this afternoon due to the storms.
Tomorrow’s going to be a long, long day. Stay dry, y’all!
Filed under Photography, Weather
Leading Edge Of The Low
There’s a large but relatively weak cutoff low pressure system approaching the West Coast, which has some potential to make our weather spotty for the next three or four days. That’s the thing with cutoff lows – most systems, high or low, get carried along with the jet stream and keep moving, more or less east to west. (I say “more or less” because it’s not terribly uncommon to get weather maps that look like this, and there you’ll have significant north/south components to the motion in addition to the generally easterly direction.)
But tonight, about an hour before sunset, these waves (and they really are caused by ripples in the atmosphere) of puffy clouds were moving through.
I had been hoping for a spectacular sunset, but in the end we just got a tinge of pink at the last moment.
Filed under Photography, Weather
Winter Returns To Los Angeles!
At least, that would be your conclusion if you were wandering around Woodland Hills on Ventura Boulevard this evening.
Among Los Angeles many bizarre (and occasionally endearing) qualities is the way that locals react to dips in the temperatures. Tonight after work I took a quick walk down the block to the bank. The sun was still up, but the wind was starting to gust to 15 or 20 knots and the air had started to cool.
It had “cooled” all the way down to 65°F. The horror!
Walking back to the office I passed one person after another, more than a dozen total, who were bundled up like they were going to the South Pole. Ski jackets, woolen hats, scarves, gloves, and even then there were people hugging themselves for warmth while they stood waiting for the light to change.
I swear, it was noticeable enough that I started to wonder if I wasn’t somehow in a little bubble of thermal discontinuity, separated from reality by some unseen barrier that was fending off the horrible fate of freezing to death right there on the Boulevard at the end of April.
Not a single person in sight was walking around in a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. That’s one of the other bizarre things you’ll almost always see in Los Angeles, even if it truly is down below 40°, blowing a gale, and raining sideways. But not tonight.
When it gets so odd in LA that you have to stop, look around, and wonder what in hell’s going on, that’s a good day.
Filed under Los Angeles, Weather
Post Downpour At Camarillo
Yesterday while at the CAF hangar at Camarillo Airport, we had a couple of heavy rain showers. They lasted a half-hour or more, and were dropping rain at about a third of an inch per hour. Not like anything they get in Florida or the Gulf Coast during a hurricane, but pretty impressive for SoCal, especially with our ongoing drought.
This of course led to pretty much everyone in the hangar lined up just inside the doors with their cell phones out, taking pictures of the rain. As one does in SoCal. I was as guilty as the next guy, but I posted mine on our CAF SoCal FaceBook page and Twitter. The Twitter post got picked up and retweeted by the National Weather Service Twitter account, which in turn led to it being picked up (they asked permission) by the local CBS affiliate.
Whoopie!
Just before I left for the day the showers had passed by, but were still all around us. You know what I did?
(Click to enlarge)
I took pictures, of course!
Anyone who didn’t get the answer to that needs to peruse much more of this site. Just do a search for either the “photography,” “travel,” or “space” category tags. Enjoy!
Filed under CAF, Photography, Weather
An Above Average Sunset
There have been many over the past couple of years that were MUCH more spectacular, but given the long run of boring Los Angeles sunsets, this one was nice to see.
(As always, click to get the full-sized version.) The date palm on the left and right edges? The same tree. This is about a 340° panorama.
See the plane heading out of LAX to points northward?
There they go!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather
Sunset, March 29th
Not quite up to par compared to John Scalzi’s Ohio sunset this evening, but not bad.
Filed under Photography, Weather
A Time-Lapse Cloudy View
Nice view from my office window, especially on a day with puffy clouds racing in different directions at different altitudes. Lots of playing with shadows and sunlight across the landscape.
Pity I don’t have much time to look at it.
Spring Starts Tomorrow?
Well, at least in this time zone. 21:30 on March 19th PDT, 00:30 on March 20th EDT, 04:30 on March 20th UTC.
Why can’t we all just use UTC and just know that in our particular time zone (for example) it might be “normal” for sunrise to be at 16:00 or so and sunset to be at 05:00 or so the next day? Too confusing?
They’re just arbitrary numbers.
Anyway, a non-arbitrary event (the sun crossing the equator as the Earth’s tilted axis and orbit around the sun make the sun appear to rise higher and/or lower throughout the year) occurs tomorrow, and I for one can’t wait. It’s been a truly brutal winter in Los Angeles.
The must have been at least three or four days where it got all the way down into the upper 40’s! Not to mention at least two days when it rained. What kind of cut-rate paradise is this, anyway!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 