Update: Last night my cam picked up 8 meteors. Considering that we were completely clouded over from about 9:00pm to 1:00am, that is pretty remarkable. Most were small to very small. Hopefully tonight (the peak) it will be clear all night....
The Geminid meteor shower is going to peak on the evening of December 13/14. It got started a little early... Around 6:00pm tonight my night cam picked up a couple of meteors. 30 minutes later it captured one very small one as well. All with the same trajectory. Here are a couple of images. The first is a partial caused by the shutter opening as the meteor was traveling downward. The second is a nice fireball....
The link below is a nice, simple article about the Geminid meteor shower. It states that it's best to look south, but north seemed to work tonight... so far.... Unfortunately the clouds are moving in as I type....
Thought I'd put together a 3 cam panorama time lapse of today.... It was quite a day with a lot of variety in this video... Lots of rainbows between the downpours and even some blue sky with towering cumulus....
There were so many rainbows I decided to extract them and put them into a separate time lapse.
More wind and rain on the way... In the last 24 hours we have received 1.18" of rain and the top gust .... so far.... is 46mph. There have been some ominous images today... Like this one:
There has also been a steady parade of rainbows. Thought I'd put this all together into a 3 cam panorama time lapse....
We are in the midst of a fairly decent geomagnetic storm. If the weather would cooperate, we would be having a great show. Last night it was VERY active and we had a nice view of the clouds. The night before, the clouds parted just enough at times to give us a glimpse of what we have been missing..... Besides the clouds being an issue, a bright moon makes it difficult as well. But.... We did pick up some decent images and a time lapse.
Here is the best image:
The time lapse shows the activity taking place overnight
October 31 This week my night cam caught Orionid meteors two nights in a row. This is rare. Plus, they were both fireball status....
October 21
Cliff
Mass gives a nice, comprehensive overview about this "little"
atmospheric river event we are going to have today.... One thing that
stands out for me is the forecast for our own personal rain shadow.... It's gonna be wet here, but nothing like areas around us. http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/…/5000-mile-atmospheric-river…
October 19
At one of the PNW Weather Workshops I attended, there was a great presentation on "Sneaker Waves". It is really easy to see how folks underestimate how fast this can happen. The NWS posted this on Twitter today and I thought this would be appropriate to share now with all the HUGE waves out on the coast during these storms. The most important thing they stressed at the presentation was to NEVER turn your back on the ocean. In this video, no one was killed, but lives are lost every year to these powerful waves.... In the video they showed at the conference, lives were lost.....
The wave shows up about 30+ seconds into the video.... Wait for it!
October 18
It looks like we are in for another round of wind and rain. Yesterday was probably just the opening act for a lot of weather coming our way. The atmospheric river we have coming our way even has Ginger Zee talking about us on GMA….
I thought I would share a little caveat about the warning zones in our area. We are at the very northern tip of Seattle / Hood Canal forecast zone. At the same time, if you draw a line across the Admiralty Inlet and Northern Puget Sound zones, we are in that zone. To illustrate, I put a blue dot on the current advisory map. This is why I have the Marine and Weather Advisories for both zones on my site.
So…. Which advisory do we look at? I would think we will be high end “Wind Advisory” or low end “High Wind Warning”…. In the end, all this means is that it is going to be a pretty good blow today and we may have winds in excess of 40mph. My generator will be ready…..
October 17 Scott Sistek does a nice job of describing what we experienced today.... Click Here For Scott's Blog Earlier Today: A good blow going on this morning.... Gusts to 40 mph so far. Cam 3 picked up the transformer on Whidbey Island blowing this morning that left 3,487 customers without power....
October 14 We did have a decent show from Aurora between 10:30 and 12:30 last night...
October 13 A possibility of Aurora activity tonight....
October 12 Huge wind shear yesterday afternoon....
October 11 The instability today caused some incredible cumulus activity.... Clouds on Steriods...
There were a couple of lightning strikes North of us last night....
Yesterday there was a lot of instability in the clouds.... Here is an 80 second "Weather Nerd" video of yesterday
October 3 A bright moon, bright Mt. Baker and a bright Meteor....
October 2
A bright moon is typically not a good time for night photography. Last night’s time lapse came out very interesting though. Watch the sky as the moon sets and the clouds move over….
September 28 We had an awesome Northern Lights show last night. Here is a 2 minute time lapse and a few images....
September 27 We had a decent Aurora show last night and there "could" be more tonight....
The time lapse shows that it went on for most of the night...
September 23 Have you ever noticed the Doppler radar showing rain when we know it
isn't raining. Sometimes it is just clutter from the sensitivity
settings.... But, this time of year it is birds.... migrating south....
Cliff Mass covers this in his blog today. He talks a bit about our dry
summer and then covers the "bird radar"....
September 16 It seems like there is always something going on out front.
Today
we had some incredible superior mirages on Whidbey Island. These are
caused by a large temperature difference between the lower level (sea
level) and the air above. It actually works like a prism and bends the
light. When it severely distorts the image, it is given the label of
Fata Morgana…. Historically, there are many references by ancient
sailors. For a little more information, this is a pretty good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)
Today I captured my best Fata Morgana image yet. This is a photo of
Bush Point on Whidbey Island which is approximately 8 miles away. If
you look closely, the houses are stacked on top of each other with a
little sea in between. A large majority of those homes are single
story. It really is a pretty remarkable phenomenon….
Last night we had a visit from Aurora and it appears to be erupting from Mt. Baker...
Here is a brief time lapse of this event:
This was followed by an awesome smoky sunrise....
And.... Let's throw in a couple of meteors too.... It was a busy night....
September 15 We had a minor Aurora show most of the night last night. It was also crystal clear all night, so this made for a very nice time lapse. Here is a YouTube version, but the quality of the video is much better here if you have a fast internet connection: http://skunkbayweather.com/AuroraAllNight091517.mp4
September 14 Nice moon rise followed by the sunrise this morning....
September 13 We had a minor Aurora event overnight....
September 12 Beautiful Moonrise last night followed by a sunrise in the fog...
September 6 Today, Bush Point completely disappeared....
September 5 Today started with horrific smoke.....
Now with all this smoke and the only relief in sight is rain and clouds later this week.... This is a VERY frustrating development. Very bad timing.... Large Aurora Storm Coming
September 4 We had a very nice fireball meteor this morning that looked like it was targeting Mt. Baker...
September 3
A time lapse of the smoke moving in at sunrise...
September 2 We had a modest Aurora event and a nice meteor...
September 1 Caught a Aurigid meteor this morning. This shower peaked today.
Weather (and moon) permitting, we should start seeing some September
Perseid meteors that peak on the 10th....
August 29, 2017 There are fires throughout most of the Cascade range right now from Canada to California. This explains the smoke we are experiencing. One of the big contributors is the Jolly Mtn. fire just NW of Cle Elum. Here is a map of the fires:
I just put together a time lapse of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday taken at the same time to show the progression of the smoke.
August 28, 2017 Yesterday we decided to run up to Port Hudson in our boat for lunch. When we got there, the sky was just incredible. We saw something that I couldn't explain. There were dark vertical shafts across the horizon. I took some pictures and shared it with Scott Sistek at KOMO. He found that they were shadows on the smoke layer from the clouds above. They were very eerie looking. Here is Scott's Blog: http://komonews.com/weather/scotts-weather-blog/whats-with-the-spooky-dark-clouds-a-trick-of-the-smoke-layer
Here are the pics:
Last night the smoke started to show from the Jolly Mtn. fire that is just NW of Cle Elum.
Then, this morning's sunrise showed more of that smoke coming this way:
August 25, 2017
Incredible sunrise this morning....
HD Link to this video: http://skunkbayweather.com/SR0825.mp4 A note about Hurricane Harvey: It is taking a very
similar approach to the mainland as the most deadly hurricane on record. The
1900 Galveston Hurricane left between 6,000 and 12,000 dead. It remains the
deadliest natural disaster in US history. It was believed to be a Category 4 at
landfall and Harvey is currently forecast as a Category 2-3. So, the winds will
not be as strong, but flooding will be the big issue. A lot of the deaths were attributed
to flooding from the storm surge along with heavy rains. There will be similar,
but slightly less intense conditions with Harvey. The big difference is the
change in the infrastructure of Galveston and surrounding areas. Seawalls have
been constructed and some areas have been elevated since then. Bottom line,
thanks to good forecasting and evacuation notices this will be nothing like the
1900 storm, but it is still a storm that deserves a huge amount of respect. The
rainfall associated with Harvey is forecast to be horrific and there will be
flooding.
Here is more information on the 1900
Galveston Hurricane….
August 23, 2017 We had an incredible sunset this evening....
We had another minor Aurora storm last night and this morning. Here are a couple of time lapses and an image from just before sunrise:
Here is a time lapse of just the morning when it was fairly intense:
This is a video of all night. There was a minor storm for most of the evening:
August 22, 2017
A nice example of a Superior Mirage today. These images are of Bush Point on Whidbey Island ( 8 miles away). This is the beginning, full on and then no mirage for perspective...
The eclipse was a bust for all 5 of my cams... Unless you enjoy time lapse video of fog.... But, last night we were treated to a Northern Lights show.
There has been so much press about the eclipse I have not wanted to
add to the noise… But here are my plans. My cams all point North and
are fixed mount, so I will not be photographing the actual eclipse.
There will be many, many images from far more skilled photographers than
me, so I am not feeling left out…. My photography is a little
different niche.
I will have 5 cameras running tomorrow morning. Hopefully they won’t be exciting images of fog….. I have the 3 main cameras that provide the panorama image at the top of my site that run 24/7/365 and time lapse every hour.
Since we are looking at close to total darkness, I will be firing up my
Canon night cam for about 30 minutes before and after the peak. My
goal will be to see stars…. Lofty goal, but I will be setting the
camera to capture any light available either side of the peak. So, that
camera will be overexposed before and after. Hopefully it will be
perfectly exposed at the peak…. It’s all guesswork and I cannot
manually adjust the camera during this event without messing up the
images.
I just received a new camera that I bought as a spare to
my Canon night cam. I will be setting it up on a temporary tripod
pointing North as well. It will be set to automatically adjust to the
light levels throughout the event. With the automatic settings it will
not have great detail when it gets really dark, but it should do a nice
job of capturing the transition from light to darkness to light..... I
plan on running it from 9:00 to noon. Hopefully it will provide nice
high definition images that will transition smoothly in time lapse.
Regardless, it will be an interesting day…..
August 19, 2017 Spotted some very strange light coming from one of the cruise ships that went by last night...
We also had a nice moon rise / sunrise again with the moon chasing Venus....
August 18, 2017
Thoughts I shared on Facebook tonight.... I think our simple home in Hansville is going to be a wonderful place to
be around 10:20am on Monday morning.... I just hope that folks in the
area will "listen" and appreciate the sounds (or lack thereof) as the
eclipse happens.... I really hope that the rumor of fireworks at that
time is NOT true.... I have only experienced one other eclipse in my
life and it was what I heard that I remember most....
Another great night for stargazing.... A minor Aurora event along with a few small meteors....
August 14, 2017 There was a HUGE fire on Whidbey Island this morning....
August 12, 2017 This is a time lapse video of the cloudy night last night. There were some stars, but the real highlight here is seeing how the cruise ships light up the sky..... Wow....
August 11, 2017 Thought I'd have a little fun with the Groundhog Day theme.... This is a bit longer than usual and intentionally annoying.... :)
August 10, 2017 Anybody else feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day?.....
August 7, 2017 Tonight,
in the increasing smoke from the BC fires, we had a remarkable superior
mirage from Bush Point on Whidbey Island. Notice the distortion on the
trees to the left. This is called a fata morgana....
