Cliff's Latest Blog and Steam Fog

 Here is Cliff's Latest Blog:

Cliff's Blog

And a video of Steam Fog in Skunk Bay

Cliff's Latest Blog

Here is Cliff's Latest Blog ..... And a time lapse from this morning...

Cliff's Blog  

Some BRUTAL Cold Weather Coming...

We have been watching this for a while now and the forecast models are starting to agree....  We have some BRUTAL weather coming and we had better prepare right away.  This has the potential to be record setting.  I really like following Cliff Mass through extreme events like this.  He has some very interesting insight into this coming event.

Here is his latest blog: Cliff Mass Blog

Another Great Northern Lights Show....

There was a huge solar storm going on yesterday afternoon.  The odds of seeing the Aurora were slim and none because of the heavy cloud cover and timing.  Clouds and daylight make it impossible.  I chose not to run my good night cam, but was later "inspired" by a follower....  Very glad I got the nudge.

These are HUGE KP levels.  The higher the number the bigger the storm.  My cam usually can pick up the lights above 4KP.  They are typically visible to the naked eye around 5.5 and above.  This was an incredible storm, but we had heavy clouds..... 

Then, around 5:00am the clouds parted for a while.....

I think time lapse makes for an incredible show.....

Amazing Northern Lights Show

Last night was perhaps the best show I have ever seen.  Even to the naked eye, the whole northern sky was lit up around 11:30pm.  Here is a time lapse of the whole evening and a few images.

Noctilucent Clouds and Beautiful Sunrise

Every year for about 6 weeks we get the opportunity to see Noctilucent Clouds...  3 weeks either side of the Summer Solstice.  They happen about an hour after sunset and an hour or 2 before sunrise.  On Thursday they were so bright they actually lit up our bedroom.  They are WAY up in the Northern sky... About 250,000 to 300,000 feet above the earth's surface.  Still images are nice, but I really enjoy watching them on time lapse.  Here is a panorama image from Cam 2 and Cam 3.

Here is a time lapse.  I like watching the spider web type tentacles that grow on the horizon.

An interesting fact about these clouds is that there is not a recorded event of them prior to 1885.  There are a lot of theories about how they are formed, but the prevalent one is that they are ice crystals on comet dust.  I have to wonder if there isn't a relationship to the industrial age due to the lack of previous reports. 

The sunrise on Thursday wasn't too shabby either....

Cliff Mass did a nice blog on these events as well:

Cliff Mass Noctilucent Blog

 

A Spectacular Light Pillar Show

 

Periodically I see a few light pillars from my night images.  On the evening of May 3rd we had a show like I have never seen.  It was pretty spectacular.  Cliff Mass picked it up and did a blog on it.  He gives some nice detail about how this phenomenon happens. He also said some very kind words and shared the video I just presented at this years Weather Workshop on May 1st.

Cliff Mass Light Pillar Blog