Summer, fog!... a bit of cirrus... NO rain!

There has been some notably strange cirrus lately!

But from now until October the only sky story here will be 'fog'.

One of my favorite shots of fog, above - it's just trying to form, and make it's way in, to the shore. This how the fog is, always coalescing, and trying to move in, over the hills....

 ...thru the bay, whatever niche it can find to exploit, it will do that, have no doubt about it. It can also burn off just as fast, be a fleeting occurrence, as cool air hits a coastal bluff.



On another note, perhaps next winter will give us a big change-up.

Early signs point to a strong, disruptive El Niño:
(but it depends upon who you listen to!)

'Whales and fish are showing up in odd places, nesting pelicans are in dire straits, and experts are increasingly convinced that this will be a significant event.
June 15, 2014 by Pete Thomas
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/early-signs-point-strong-disruptive-el-nino/
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http://theweek.com/article/index/263398/the-return-of-el-nio

( notice that the web person can't spell 'el nino' right, but hey, WTF, the link works.)
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As for the drought?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/21/us-usa-california-drought-idUSKBN0EW00D20140621

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/16/california-drought_n_5340596.html

http://www.sgvtribune.com/general-news/20140627/california-drought-blankets-entire-state-el-nino-forecast-dims

I keep reading (or should i say 'clicking upon'?) so many california drought stories that are all the same. All created to make you 'click' you to a page that has advertising, which gets monitored, and bills the advertisers accordingly.
According to your(our) clicks.
This is not news, it is commerce.

I was here ( living in SF) for the last El Nino event - winter, '97.
It rained cats, dogs and other small mammals. And maybe even some larger mammals, if you get my metaphorical drift.
It was "big time bad ass just when you hoped it might end it didn't and set off every car alarm in the neighborhood".
That bad, yes.
We need mo' of that.
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There are lots of less noticed by-products of the drought, here's just a few:

http://news.yahoo.com/california-tule-fog-becoming-increasingly-rare-photo-123716141.html

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/California-drought-helps-coho-salmon-migration-5576280.php

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/California-drought-for-salmon-more-at-stake-5318815.php

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This is an old link, but well worth a click, fog in the Grand Canyon,

Check out this majestic and rare site at the Grand Canyon over the weekend:
http://www.livescience.com/41633-grand-canyon-fog-photo.html

http://travel.yahoo.com/blogs/compass/grand-canyon-gets-rare-visitor-massive-fog-203931729.html
For the second time in recent days, the canyon experienced an inversion, where freezing fog and clouds filled the gaping divide, acting like a lid.

12 awe-inspiring Grand Canyon views
Sunset.com
Published 12:18 pm, Thursday, November 7, 2013

http://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/12-awe-inspiring-Grand-Canyon-views-4964512.php

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June 25 - it's actually cloudy, quite cloudy by 4PM.
Will anything actually come of it? Guess who is not holding his breath?
Nothing happened.
The next AM, on my walk to the bus, the sky was like this, rain? zilch!



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A couple of good educational links for ya:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=cloud_classification

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm

I'll be back next month, hopefully w/ some new stuff... if not, previous year's fog will suffice. Really, it will. :-)

 

Another month... no rain

May 5-7 Ferocious wind!
The last few days of early May the wind has been ferocious, i mean totally ass kicking 'i have a hard time standing up' kinda wind. But the wind is marvelous, it's invisible but...so affecting, & cleansing in a way.
Will there be any more rain this spring? I am sure as shit not holding my breath, rain happening in May or June would be rather unusual.
Since then? It's just been blue skies or light cirrus all the way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_clouds

An excellent page and a very loooong one, i will give you a very edited explanation:

A cloud is "a visible mass of liquid droplets or frozen crystals made of water or variouschemicals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of a planetary body..."

Cirrus clouds are definitely frozen water, since  they are at high altitudes w/ rather low temperatures.
Generally they form at anywhere between 13,000 and feet up.
They also form on other planets: Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and maybe Neptune.

The ice crystals in cirrus clouds have different shapes, as well as different sizes, which determine how they behave and look.

There are four distinct species: castellanos, fibratus, spissatus and unicus.

Examples:

Fibratus

Cirrocumulus

I think this one is 'unicus'... i think.

There is certainly no lack of websites devoted to clouds:

(good information here, terrible web design:
http://www.clouds-online.com/

http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

They also have various optical effects, like colorful circumhorizontal arcs:

And what are called sun dogs, which is a circle around the sun w/ a halo of a sort, with flares at two particular angles from the sun.

 

Keep in mind that these clouds are ice particles, which act like mini prisms - remember the Pink Floyd album cover?

....that can split light into a spectrum.

On other planets, cirrus are not made from water vapor but from much nastier stuff like methane and ammonia.
There now, I have condensed what was 5 pages of print-out and three pages of footnotes into an easily digestible nugget for someone who is not a scientist. A lot of this wikipedia page is for scientists.

One exception to the recent blue skies and cirrus:

May 18 Sunday - weather forecast is for a low pressure system to spin off from the Pacific, maybe give us some thunderstorms in the next few days.

May 19 Monday 2 PM - there's some great cirrus, but no sign of rain.

By 4 PM? there's some changes a-brewin'...

But it all totally crapped out, no rain, no nothin'.

I've said a thousand times, weather forecasting is the only job you can have and be wrong 50% of the time, and still have a fucking job.

As for the drought? SF Chronicle has what continues to be a good page:

http://www.sfgate.com/drought/

here's a few recent hi-lites:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Sierra-snowpack-is-barely-5446649.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-drought-Jobs-money-dry-up-in-farm-5431129.php

Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park will open for the season at noon Friday (May 9)
Since 1980, this ties for the earliest opening with 1987, when the road was also opened on May 2. Last year the road opened on May 11. The average opening date is May 27, in time for Memorial Day Weekend.
Tioga Road, bounded on both sides by State Highway 120, is the popular crossing of the Sierra Nevada that tops out at 9,943-foot Tioga Pass and leads east down to Mono Lake.
http://blog.sfgate.com/stienstra/2014/05/01/yosemites-tioga-pass-to-open-noon-friday/

http://news.yahoo.com/water-flows-uphill-maybe-california-105659086.html

"The odds are increasing that an El Niño is in the works for 2014—and recent forecasts show it might be a big one."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/07/el_nino_2014_2015_forecasts_show_it_could_grow_into_a_monster.html

http://news.yahoo.com/el-nino-back-know-2014-version-222327719.html

A Nice map of possible el nino effects:
http://io9.com/a-map-of-where-el-nino-will-strike-around-the-world-1579079407

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/As-Central-Valley-fog-disappears-fruit-nut-5496710.php

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/03/drought_crisis_arizona_may_be_california_s_future.html

A Nice side effect of the drought:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/The-coast-is-clear-Water-good-at-most-Bay-Area-5498567.php

Next post, I'll be thinkin' in summer mode, and that means fog. Maybe I'll shoot some, if not, i have many years worth of images. Like say... these two:

Let's see what next month brings.....