Fall finally arrived, chasing our later summer away. The days have been mild, the nights cool, and the sky blue.
There was some humidity in the air Saturday morning when I walked the dogs down into Texas Valley.
Since our house faces east, we can see the sun rising, but not going down. But there are still some nice sunsets, even if we can’t actually see the sun setting.
We aren’t getting up any earlier, but since the sun is rising later, we’re still getting to see some sunrises. This was about 7:13 on Wednesday.
This was three minutes later.
This was at 7:18.
And this was at 7:29.
But wait, there was more sky up there.
There are some nice wave-form clouds up above the lower dark clouds. There are some faint waves oriented differently from most of the other waves, which indicates wind shear in the upper atmosphere. Wind shear can consist of regions of the atmosphere that have varying wind speeds, or that have winds blowing in different directions.
Do you see the dark spots in the lower part of this image? Those are birds.
I have several shots of the eastern sky from October that I have neglected to post, so here they are.
This one is from one of the places where we often get to see a wide swath of sky in the late afternoon — the store where we buy our groceries.
The next is a faint rainbow that appeared in rain that was moving slowly from the direction of town towards us. It is actually within the small valley between our part of the mountain and the next ridge over.
I think I know where the end of the rainbow hit the ground on the right. I might try to find the pot of gold if our neighbor hasn’t already absconded.
I’m not positive I haven’t already posted this one, but it’s nice, so if so, here it is again.
We don’t usually get up before the sun rises, but for some reason I did at least once last week.
I like the gradient between the deep red at the horizon and the deep blue up higher in the sky. A bright star would still have been visible up there, if one had happened to be up at that time.
I actually got up way before dawn last Sunday because I had to drive up to North Carolina, but I’ll leave that for later.
We have been watching Hurricane Florence’s path for nearly a week. At one time it was going to threaten Leah’s aunt in Winston-Salem, NC. Later it looked like it would move further south and west, possibly coming close to us. We were hoping for rain, although less than the coastal areas are getting.
Finally Florence’s path was settled, and it splits the difference. It’s moving through South Carolina, and we are not likely to get any rain. However, it seems to be spreading clouds towards us. There was a bank of thick clouds to our east and south most of the day on Saturday. Later in the evening the clouds reached us.
These apparently are part of the extreme outer cloud bands. Unfortunately it seems that they are not going to bring us rain.
As Leah and I were driving home on Friday, Aug 17, I noticed something unusual in the clouds. I stopped and took a photo through the windshield with my phone (as usual).
When I first saw this photo, I thought I had somehow missed the unusual feature in the clouds. But I didn’t; it’s there, but not obvious. I doubt that you can spot what I noticed. Here’s the photo cropped to emphasize the particular feature I noticed.
The clouds look like someone has smudged them upwards. I would have thought nothing of it if the streaked edge of the cloud had been on the bottom. I would have assumed that it was virga. But virga doesn’t fall up. I’m not positive what this is, but I think it must be shadows cast by a cloud on other clouds. The sun was setting in the general direction of the clouds, and it was lower than the clouds, so the sun’s position is at least consistent with that interpretation.
What appear to be glints in the cloud (or maybe eyes) are probably bugs that have been swiped by the windshield wipers. A good reason not to take photos through a windshield.
These images demonstrate how different our perception is when we see a scene in real life, compared to when we see the same scene as a photographic image. For some reason, I had to search the photo to find the feature that immediately caught my eye when I saw it in person.