Somewhat rare March snow events are in the forecast. Cliff Mass does a great job of sharing some details.
Weather and Photography
This storm came up very fast. I was on the Edmonds/Kingston ferry coming
home from work. The wind just exploded
out of the north and gave us all a good ride on our way to Kingston. On my drive home to Hansville, the road was littered
with debris. I had a few “religious”
moments as the trees were dropping all around me.
The power was out when I got home.
I went in the house to check on things and saw two large fishing boats
out front crashing their way through the nasty seas. I noticed one of the boats seemed to be
riding reasonably well and the other was getting slammed. I watched it bow under to the pilot house and
then three quarters of the hull went airborne when it came out of the
trough. I watched it for a minute or two
and then went to the back of the house and got the generator going. By the time I got back inside I checked on
the two vessels. I could only see
one. I grabbed my binoculars and found
the second boat…. It was turtled (capsized
upside down) off Foulweather Bluff. I
called the Coast Guard and was on the phone with them for about 30 minutes giving them updates.
There was no local media news coverage at all about this event. The main coverage was about the damage to Ivars. I was very disappointed that this wasn’t
covered. I finally found this article
that came out 3 years later. The rescue
of the crew of the Martle was a very heroic act of seamanship. They risked their lives to save that crew.
Here is a link to the story from the Seattle Weekly that
gives the details. It’s a very good read….
https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/wreck-of-the-martle/
Virtually every night there is something interesting to
see. I have to make a judgement opinion
of what is “post worthy”. Right now I
actively post on Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Occasionally I post here on this “blog” for
those who don’t have social media.
I thought I would put together a review of the last couple
of nights of captures to share what I see.
First, an aircraft flying over can make an interesting pic. A lot of the high flying planes are mistakenly identified as
meteors. After years of doing this I can
easily tell the difference. Here is an
interesting one from last night. (Not
Post Worthy).
This morning we had a small meteor that I didn’t post.
Yesterday we had a fireball that I did post. The difference between a fireball and meteor is very subjective. They are rated by magnitude. The smaller the number the brighter they are. Typically the minimum magnitude for a fireball is -4 which is approximately the brightness of Venus. Here is a fireball from the night before last.
We also had a good example of light pillars last night. These are ice crystals that are refracting light from a source on the ground. These are NOT Northern Lights. Here is the example from last night:
All of this happened in the last couple of nights.
We see Northern Lights frequently on my cams. Here is a good show from February 27, 2023
Noctilucent Clouds are visible around the Summer Solstice,
June through July. Here is a nice one from 2020.
I have only touched on a few of the bigger night topics. I have left out a lot of events like Comets, Moonrises, Night Virga, MoonBows, house fires on Whidbey, etc. A lot of interesting stuff happens at night and thankfully my cams run unattended. I do my best work when I'm sound asleep.... 😁
This morning we had a decent Northern Lights show through the clouds.
This is a time lapse of this mornings show.
This could just be the beginning of several shows. According to Dr. Tamitha Skov there is a lot of solar activity going on right now and most of it is coming our way for several days. Here is a forecast from her that was posted late November 4th.
This morning's sunrise gave us a glimpse of what we have coming. The intersection of altocumulus clouds and smoke on the horizon made for some interesting textures and colors.
Some serious wildfires in Eastern Washington. Here is a brief video of the Pyrocumulus clouds caused by the heat and smoke as seen from Skunk Bay.