Category Archives: Weather

April 10, 2016 · 20:47

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?

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(Click to enlarge)

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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!

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Filed under CAF, Photography, Weather

April 5, 2016 · 22:32

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.

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(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.

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See the plane heading out of LAX to points northward?

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There they go!

 

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

March 29, 2016 · 22:43

Sunset, March 29th

Not quite up to par compared to John Scalzi’s Ohio sunset this evening, but not bad.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

March 28, 2016 · 23:34

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.

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Filed under Video, Weather

March 18, 2016 · 23:29

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!

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Filed under Astronomy, Weather

February 18, 2016 · 23:00

Cool Morning Clouds

Of course, following rain spots in the shadows of the night, there are cool looking clouds lingering after the cold front moves through in the morning.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

February 17, 2016 · 23:05

Rain Spot Shadows

It had started raining fairly hard this evening, so I was sprinting as best I could through the dark parking lot to get to my car. I had parked right under one of those odd lights we have on the parking lot roof, so when I jumped into the car and paused to catch my breath, everything was polka-dotted with moving, wiggling shadows, cast from the drops on the windshield and the light directly overhead. It was most pronounced on the bright, yellow sweater I was wearing. Sometimes I could see long, snake-like lines of shadow as groups of drops congealed into a critical mass and slid down the glass.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

January 28, 2016 · 21:29

Heavy Surf

There’s a storm coming this weekend, our second big El Niño storm in SoCal. This time, one of the warnings that they’re repeating over and over is about some huge waves hitting the coast, further eroding the beaches, and in some cases the cliffs along the coasts. Many of these beaches and cliffs have very expensive houses and apartments and condos on them, so it’s not just news, it’s big news.

(For those of you not in SoCal, you’re not necessarily spared – this storm will head across the country toward the East Coast and pretty much repeat the blizzard of last week. If you’re in its path, stock up on milk and bread now! Or beer and Captain Crunch, whatever floats your boat.)

Anyway, all of the television stations of course have their fancy, high definition maps to tell us where the danger will be:

Channel 7 Surf Advisory Map 2

Image: KABC Television, Los Angeles

What’s wrong with this picture?

If it were ME making this graphic, I would have that lovely fuchsia band hugging the coastline a bit more. If you’re familiar with the Los Angeles region, you’ll see that their map has a High Surf Advisory all the way inland as far as Interstate 5. That means that places like downtown LA, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills are all in danger of high surf, right?

Let me tell you, if the surf’s so bad that it’s going to be dangerous at Dodger Stadium (17 miles from the coast and at an elevation of 267 feet), they need to be evacuating twenty million people from Southern California, not showing us pretty, pink maps!

Oxnard in Ventura County? Ditto. The CAF hangar in Camarillo is just above our weather woman’s left wrist, but about five miles from the coast. I hope I don’t need my water wings this weekend. But they’re showing the warning area to go all the way back inland into the Ojai Valley and up into the mountains by Santa Paula and Fillmore.

Someone needs to go back to coloring school and learn to color closer to the lines!

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Weather

January 21, 2016 · 23:21

Sunrise

When the alarm clock went off at 6AM and I turned on the local news, they were all talking about the amazing sunrise going on out there. I’ve done lots of sunsets, but sunrises are more rare. They happen so damn early!

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It wasn’t bad, and you’ll notice that the tree silhouettes looking to the east are much different than the “usual” look to the west.

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Then it started to get really bright and colorful.

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Those guys and gals on the television were correct! (But so was I – it was really early!)

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

January 2, 2016 · 23:27

The First Beautiful Sunset Of 2016

Well, at least is the first beautiful one in Southern California.

It might also be a rare sight for a few days here. That El Niño thing appears to finally be targeting SoCal – the fifteen day forecast currently shows seven of those days with a 50% or greater chance of rain. After four solid years of serious drought we need the rain, but after four solid years of serious drought the ground is baked & hard & burned so any hard rain to start off will just run off and cause flooding and mudslides.

Welcome to SoCal, where the four seasons are Shaking, Burning, Flooding, and Boring!

Tonight I was getting ready to leave the CAF hangar in Camarillo just before sunset and saw the storm front moving in from the north and west.

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On the hills at the north end of Camarillo, across the runway and the 101 Freeway, you can see bright flashes off of the windows of several houses that are lined up just right.

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Our C-46, “China Doll.”

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Looking back to the west from “China Doll,” three of our four hangars.

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From the parking lot, just after the sun disappeared out over the Pacific.

 

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Filed under CAF, Photography, Weather