Pages Tagged “clouds”
Blog Posts
- Latte Art in the Sky
A hole-punch cloud, also known as a fall-streak hole, seen from Redondo Beach, looking toward LAX airport. These form when an airplane passes through a thin cloud layer, disrupting the cloud.
- Rainbow Cloud
A brilliant circumhorizon arc fragment seen above Los Angeles. I went to lunch at exactly the right time, and judging by Instagram, a lot of people saw it.
- Crimson Saucers in the Sky
In a case of perfect timing, I caught this view of lenticular clouds over the San Gabriel Mountains last night, lit up red from the side by the sunset.
- Fire Dragon
Photo of clouds lit up by the setting sun, resembling a dragon or a giant phoenix.
- Post-Storm Beach Sunset (Photos)
I drove down to the nearest beach after work to catch the sunset and clouds. I also got to see rain over Santa Monica and clouds above Catalina.
- Orange Sunset & Double Rainbow Over LA (Photos)
We’ve had a couple of storms run through Los Angeles over the past week. Last Friday, I went up to the top of a parking structure after work to look at the clouds, and stayed to watch a double rainbow and the play of light at sunset.
- Snowy Mountains Through the Cloud Window
On my drive to work this morning, a gap in the clouds left this amazing view of the San Gabriels covered in snow from the last week’s worth of storms, lit up by the rising sun. By the time I made it up to Los Angeles, clouds had blocked the view, and I didn’t see […]
- Orange Clouds at Sunset
The view when I stepped out of the office last Thursday night. Not retouched at all except for cropping.
- Links: Clouds, the Blue ‘e’, and Bobby Tables
Incredible photo from APOD: Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus. I’ve finally replaced my Woodbridge Snow photo as my desktop wallpaper at home. Microsoft provides an interesting look back at the evolution of the Internet Explorer logo over the past fifteen (yes, fifteen) years. 100-year data preservation. A 350-year-old copy of Shakespeare is still readable. But what […]
- Curious Cloud Caps
A couple of days ago I clicked on the StumbleUpon toolbar and landed on this incredible photo of lenticular clouds over Mt. Rainer at APOD. It was a bit unnerving, because that picture has been my desktop wallpaper for the past year or so! Good call, though.
- Feathery Not-a-Rainbow Cloud
Always carry your camera. You never know when you’re going to spot something rare and fleeting, like a flattened “rainbow” in a cirrus cloud.
- Cloud Puffs Over Saddleback
I’m going to have to start taking my regular camera with me to lunch. Yesterday I looked out and saw a huge, puffy cloud, virtually alone (beneath a thin layer of wispy cirrus), hovering above Saddleback. When I stopped to take a picture, I realized that there was a whole line of little puffball clouds, […]
- Contrail Shadow, Halo, Haze & Sundog
Photos – It was a good morning for seeing interesting cloud and light formations in the sky.
- Maxfield Parrish Sky
Photo: I stepped out of the office building and felt like I’d stepped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. The whole sky looked like this.
- Partly Cloudy, Late Afternoon
- Sun Rays
A complex display of crepuscular rays lighting up a haze of smoke drifting in from the Station Fire. This next shot, taken from a 4th story window, isn’t framed as well, but shows off the complexity better.
- Station Fire Smoke Plume from Irvine
About 2:00 in the afternoon today, in a park in the Quail Hill area of Irvine. Roughly 50 miles away from the fire, perpendicular to the wind (thankfully!) That puffy plume looks a lot whiter than the rest, which is clearly smoke, making me wonder if it’s a cloud that’s formed above the fire somehow. […]
- Sundog
Friday was a good day for atmospheric optics. I watched a sundog for most of my drive home.
- Halo and Shadow: Cloud Optics Two-Fer
Yesterday morning while driving to work, I looked up from the road and saw two parallel lines in the sky: One white, one dark blue. They were, of course, a contrail and its shadow on a thin cloud layer below. Because it was a thin layer, I started looking (when I had the chance) for […]
- Lenticular Cloud
Spotted this and another cloud on Saturday, looking north. Possibly over the San Gabriels?
- Ragged Clouds at Sunrise
View from our back yard this morning. I had to tweak the colors a bit to approximate what it looked like to the naked eye. It’s still not quite right — there was a bit more pink in it, and maybe a bit less purple. Sometimes it’s worth getting up at this hour.
- Rainbow Feather Cloud
On my way back to work after lunch today, I looked out the window and saw this feathery wisp of cloud with a clear rainbow pattern running from red at the the top to violet in the middle, then turning plain white below. As I drove south, the colors moved down the cloud, disappearing entirely […]
- Stringy Clouds at Sunset
Sunset on Tuesday, March 25th, with feathery cirrus clouds and contrails. A faint sundog is visible as a slight brightening at the level of the sun, about 2/3 of the way across the picture.
- Contrail Contrast
I had to get up early today, early enough that I could still see a couple of stars (or more likely planets, but I’ve lost track of where most of them are right now). When I got to work, I was treated to the sight of these contrails lit up against the morning sky. The […]
- Corona
Spotted this on Thursday, between rain showers. It’s a slightly distorted corona, formed by diffraction of sunlight around cloud droplets, splitting the spectrum and producing rainbow-like colors. According to the Atmospheric Optics site, the distortion indicates that the droplet size varies across different parts of the cloud. This was shot through a window, and I’m […]
- Golden Lining
Friday, September 28: Adding to the mish-mash of photo sources on here, this is a still frame from a video clip taken out the window of the car. It wasn’t supposed to be a video clip, but my camera has a sliding switch for selecting photo/video/review, and it has a tendency to shift while in […]
- Cobweb-cloud sunset
I stepped out of the office last Thursday (September 27—it was a good week for interesting late-afternoon skies) and saw this view to the west. The clouds glowing as if from within, and the curved bands as if the whole set had been dragged across the sky, reminded me a bit of pictures of reflection […]
- Sundog
Spotted a sundog last Wednesday (September 26), about an hour(?) before sunset. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, given the positioning, the brightness, and the reddish coloring on the end nearest the sun. The sharp edges of the reflecting cloud (a fragment of a contrail?) make it look a bit odd, though, […]
- Rays of Light
Every once in a while, I manage to get a decent shot with my cell phone camera (currently a RAZR V3T). Taken August 4 at 6:20pm. Cleaned up slightly to remove a digital glitch just above the cloud.
- Invasion of the Lenticular Clouds!
I wasn’t expecting to see more after my last post on lenticular clouds. As I said, they’re (usually) rare in this area. But as I left the office Friday evening, I pulled onto the freeway and nearly freaked out at what I saw: A line of three smooth, layered clouds running above the ridge of […]
- Into the Storm
Here’s a photo from the same April rainstorm in which we spotted the red rainbow at sunset: This was taken about an hour earlier, driving up the 405.
- Lenticular Cloud Over Irvine
One of the problems with photographing clouds is that you can’t run and grab a better camera. You have to shoot with what you have, or they’ll change configuration and quite possibly look completely different by the time you get back. As I left for a late lunch today, I saw a set of half-discs […]
- Contrail Shadow
With any luck I’ll finally post about last week’s trip to Las Vegas soon, but meanwhile, here’s something interesting that we spotted a couple of times on the drive back: The shadow of a contrail against the sky. Here’s what it looked like, as the camera saw it. Actually, it was much more visible at […]
- Cloud Window
This morning I looked north and saw a narrow band of mountains sandwiched between two layers of clouds. The first place I could stop to take a photo, the lower layer was mostly blocked by hills, but you can still see it. Click to enlarge As a bonus, this turned out to be nearly the […]
- Sunrise, Sunset
The first photo is from Wednesday morning around 8:00. Katie took it on our drive to work. There’s actually another shot that shows more of the sky, but this one is more striking. The second shows tonight’s sunset as seen from the Metro Pointe parking lot. Yes, it’s a freeway in the foreground, but the […]
- Cloud Cover-Up
Today was a reminder that just having cloud cover doesn’t necessarily keep things cool. We’ve had occasional wispy clouds at evening, and at one point some serious cloud cover closer to the coast, but today was hazy and overcast all day—and it was just plain muggy. Eh, it’s only early August. It’ll get hotter (and […]
- Clouds on the Horizon
Well, June Gloom seems to be over, and we’re now into the time of year when we get hot, sunny days with lots of clouds. Big, towering cumulus clouds, often with anvil heads, promising shade and rain to cool things down. The teases. Yeah, we see those clouds most afternoons—on the horizon, just on the […]
- June Gloom! Extended Tour!
Yes, coastal Southern California normally has morning cloud cover into early summer. We had morning fog in San Diego and gloomy skies north of La Jolla.