To write 'It's been a wild month!' would be an understatement!

The shot above reminds me of fireflies i enjoyed back east:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Recording-breaking-rain-hits-Bay-Area-in-2017-10921429.php

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-drought-monitor-map-11-percent-severe-10920707.php

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Battered-California-roads-will-cost-600-million-10957270.php

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bridge-failure-severs-Big-Sur-s-ties-to-outside-10958200.php?t=bd9cc672e3

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Photos-show-the-insane-amounts-of-snow-piled-up-10950893.php

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Flood-puts-historic-graveyard-in-eerie-10958582.php?t=0381a95f1d

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/A-fallen-redwood-can-be-a-good-thing-10973461.php

There were many interesting skies to behold! Pictures are worth many, many words, especially mine, so let's get right to it.

I love to see the sky kissing the earth, gently.

---------------------------

3/4 Sat

A quiet and rather sunny week, but forecast calls for 'scattered showers' over the weekend.

The daylight hours were what i have dubbed 'rainbow skies' - that is to say broken cloud cover, some sunlight, some rain, producing numerous partial and fast moving rainbows. I am happy to note that i will last longer than these, and am around and sentient enough to appreciate them.

I guess i must be constantly under 'scattered', because at 9 PM it's raining sideways - lightly so, but still 'sideways'.

The next AM there are signs it ain't over yet. I'll call this a mini-mammatus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammatus_cloud
(lots of great images here!)

"Mammatus are most often associated with the anvil cloud and also severe thunderstorms. They often extend from the base of a cumulonimbus, but may also be found under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, and cirrus clouds, as well as volcanic ash clouds.  In the United States, sky gazers may be most familiar with the very distinct and more common cumulonimbus mammatus. When occurring in cumulonimbus, mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm".

The shot above was taken around 9AM.
By 10:30, there was hail!

I hope the rest of March is just as interesting as February was!
My Canon Powershot camera is always within quick reach!

July was a another really, really dull month skies-wise.

And so was the first part of August.
Except for some seriously nice cirrus that were a spinoff of some rather unusual conditions, hurricanes off the coast of Mexico. San Diego got rain, and perhaps you read of the flash flood that washed out a bridge in.. i forget... So.Cal.?.. or AZ?
Here's the lowdown at this excellent blog, much more scientific than I will ever be:

http://www.weatherwest.com/

Worth a bookmark for me.
Here's my skies - dancing, twirling, twisting, spinning:











 

 

RE:Cirrus
http://www.livescience.com/51576-cirrus-clouds-from-space.html

A lively month for wild fires, wasn't it? At last count, over 20 in California, 4 of them 'major'.
Today is a 'spare the air' day in the Bay area, there's a haze that's makes hills not far away look distant.

http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/08/06/california-burning-photographers-notebook/

El Nino? Still 'sposed to be heading our way.


If this one is anything like the winter of '97-98, we will be in deep doo-doo.
Or should i say 'water'.
I was living in SF at the time, on a nice quiet street, the rain was soooo heavy, it set off car alarms on a regular basis.
The predictions at this point are pretty certain for So.Cal., less certain for Nor.Cal.
Researchers have written that while the data is strong, nothing is certain, nothing.
Mother nature is a fickle bitch.
I hope I'll be able to make and post some images like this frothy angry view:

Plenty of good links this month, lots of interesting reading if you're in the mood.

Lake Mead hits a new low, but the drought has a silver lining -- tourism!

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83932619/
-------------------------------

Drought hastens decline of Joshua tree

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drought-hastens-decline-of-Joshua-tree-6319456.php

On Parched Navajo Reservation, ‘Water Lady’ Brings Liquid Gold
By FERNANDA SANTOS JULY 13, 2015
NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/us/on-parched-navajo-reservation-water-lady-brings-liquid-gold.html?_r=0

-------------------
Summer snowstorm hits California's Eastern Sierra - 7/11
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-83967066/

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2015/06/30/water-arizona-warning/29532993/

And while we're on the topic of drought and climate change... dig these two:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/opinion/mark-bittman-what-oysters-reveal-about-sea-change.html

A long read, very interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/how-california-is-winning-the-drought.html?_r=0


(If you bookmark any news site, the NYT should be at the top of the list.)

I'm doin' my part, showering once a week or so... and people still sit beside me on the bus, no problem.

A boring month? Not really, no....

I took in some marvelous fog, at the end of the July 4 weekend:

....but I'll save most of it for a while, hoping for a bit more in the next month, kind of a 'summer's end fog wrap up', so to speak/FWIW.

I thought July would be a boring month for skies, but no, it was not.

A few weeks ago, on the 7th, I spotted what i am pretty sure are 'mammatus' clouds, which are usually associated w/ storms/rain.

But there was no rain here.

The week leading up to the 21st-22nd there had been a low pressure system hanging out over the ocean, spinning (sucking?) in subtropical moisture ( low pressure systems spin counter clockwise hence the southern/warmer/moister air), which has actually produced some rain. Not much mind you, nothing to quench the drought, but it has brought with it a few mildly interesting skies.
I heard that in SF there was actually a bit of rain. And in Santa Rosa ( north of here, by 20 miles ) there was bit of rain. But just a bit.
Here in San Rafael there was about enough to get the street wet, underneath the canopies of trees? it was dry.
Overnight, things really happened, thunder, lightening & thunderstorms.
Comments I read at the SF Chronicle website seemed to indicate there had not been rain in July, or a storm like this in decades. In the Sierras there can be rain/thunderstorms thanks to the elevation of the mountains, but not here in the lowlands by the coast.
At 7:30AM i heard a growing rumble of thunder, louder and louder, until there was a thunderclap that sounded more like an explosion, it shook the building and my chair, just one big bad pulse. BANG!
The skies were awesome.

A few hours after this blew thru? You'd never know it had happened.

The same upper level low pressure system that created the recent thunderstorm has stuck around and made for partly cloudy days all week. This AM, i was treated to a rather nice sunrise:

I found some good discussion thanks to the NOAA:
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=CAZ006

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=MTR&issuedby=MTR&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1


Here's the NOAA talk, a bit technical, but if you can see through that, very interesting:
(even though in ALL CAPS!)

DISCUSSION...AS OF 3:10 AM PDT SUNDAY (7/27)...CHALLENGING FORECAST THIS
MORNING...MAINLY DUE TO SUBTROPICAL MOISTURE STREAMING ACROSS THE
AREA AND THE POTENTIAL FOR CONVECTION.

A STRONG UPPER HIGH REMAINS CENTERED OVER THE SOUTHWESTERN CONUS
WHILE A WEAK UPPER LOW IS LOCATED WELL OFF THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
COAST. IN BETWEEN THESE TWO SYSTEMS...SOUTHERLY FLOW IS ADVECTING
MID AND HIGH LEVEL SUBTROPICAL MOISTURE NORTHWARD ACROSS
CALIFORNIA. A WEAK SHORTWAVE TROUGH EMBEDDED IN THE SOUTHERLY FLOW
HAS BEEN TOUCHING OFF SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS OFF THE CENTRAL CA
COAST OVERNIGHT. KMUX RADAR ALSO SHOWS SCATTERED HIGH-BASED
SHOWERS...MAINLY OVER THE COASTAL WATERS. THERE IS CONSIDERABLE
DRY AIR BENEATH THESE SHOWERS AND SO PROBABLY NO MORE THAN
ISOLATED SPRINKLES ARE REACHING THE GROUND.

7/27 4 PM in San Rafael - *nothing* happened. What-do-you-fucking-know!
NOTHING!

-----------------------------
Soooo... how's that drought thing going? Not so good. In fact, it continues, it sucks, and I shower once a week.
This could be a false alarm, or it could be the beginning of something really nasty.
It is said that the Anasazi lived and survived in the SW deserts a thousand or so years ago because it was wetter then, they could grow crops. That changed, and they disappeared. What will become of us?

I did a darkroom montage print many years ago that ends up being about that, though i wasn't quite aware of it at the time.

At the right/top, some native american ruins just north of Flagstaff AZ. They blend in to the facade of some deserted buildings in a recently 'lost' desert town, at the left ...
Easy come, easy go?
I dunno.

What do you think?

http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors/article/California-drought-fuels-unusual-mountain-events-5634582.php

http://news.yahoo.com/water-levels-nevadas-lake-mead-drop-low-221400840.html
best part of this is the comments section - definitely check it out.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-drought-As-land-sinks-farmers-5649466.php

California: winter = stormy & wet? No, Not this year.

This winter has been a bust for good skies, and for rain. We had some good storms in December, but since then it's been more like summer, but without the fog. So far January (with one exception, a storm that blew thru quickly, didn't leave much rain) & February have been the driest on record. Ouch. We need the rain!! The snow-pack is paltrey, too.
Mother Nature, how 'bout some wet wrath?
Bring it on!!!
We need some stormy skies like these (from a few years ago)!!

Not to get too scientific here... but i think these are classified as/called..
"mamma"....
(or maybe 'mammatus' -  the latin version)

I have to agree, whatever follows this will definitely be a 'mother******' (of storms!)
It rained 'cats & dogs'... and other small assorted mammals.

I was happy to be able to hide in my small apt., safe, sound, and dry.
The next time i write, i hope to write about *rain*!... but i ain't holding my breath.