Tag: sunset

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Here are a couple of photos, one just before sunset, the other just after, over the past month.

First up is a twilight view of South Coast Plaza. On Friday the 13th, we went to the nearest Borders to pick up The End of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Neil Gaiman’s new short story collection, Fragile Things. We ended up crossing the bridge over to the main section of the mall, turned around, and saw an amazing twilight display with clouds silhouetted against the blue.

We stopped to take pictures. We weren’t the only ones.

Looking across a yellow-lit parking lot toward a long, low building, and above it a blue sky (fading to yellow closer to the horizon) with clusters of clouds, some dark gray, some lit from below.

Perhaps an hour later, the rainstorm arrived.

Next up is from this past Monday, October 23. I was driving up the 405 after work and noticed that there were some feathery clouds in the right area, so I started looking for sundogs. Normally I don’t find anything. It’s Southern California, after all, so the right conditions are relatively rare. (Though occasionally I see something spectacular like the full halo I caught in February.)

To my surprise, I saw a faint bright spot in the clouds, level with and to the right of the sun. It got brighter over the course of my drive, with hints of red, orange and yellow creeping in on the sunward side: a classic sundog. Once I got onto city streets, I had a chance to stop and take a picture.

The long boom of a traffic signal and street sign are silhouetted against a blue-gray sky banded with clouds. There is a bright spot in the clouds, white fading to yellow and red toward the left.

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Monday morning dawned foggy. By the time we left for work, most of the fog had burned off, but we looked out the car window and saw a huge, billowing gray cloud hugging close to the ground. If this had been the usual fire season, or if there had been no fog to start with (or if there had been time for coffee to take effect), I think we would’ve both immediately recognized it as smoke from a brush fire. The Sierra fire in the Cleveland National Forest had started just a few hours earlier.

Sierra Fire Smoke on Monday morning, blending into fog

There was still fog around, though. Continue reading →

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Backlit Morning Clouds Freeway Sunset 1

The first photo is from Wednesday morning around 8:00. Katie took it on our drive to work. There’s actually another shot that shows more of the sky, but this one is more striking. The second shows tonight’s sunset as seen from the Metro Pointe parking lot. Yes, it’s a freeway in the foreground, but the sunset itself was incredible. Both thumbnails are linked to larger copies of the photos.

Finally, here are some vaguely lenticularish clouds I saw looking north at sunset on Friday. This one’s full-size already:

Lenticular Clouds on the Horizon

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About a month ago I posted about noticing the Belt of Venus—the red band that circles the entire horizon just after sunset—and the Earth’s shadow on the sky. I snapped this picture on the drive home this evening. This is looking east, away from the setting sun.

Looking east toward Saddleback at sunset.

If you look at the right edge of the picture, behind the silhouette of the tree, you can just see the red band fading into the dark gray of the Earth’s shadow.

(And to think, I almost brought the good camera with me this morning… Update: It turns out that I did bring it, and just didn’t realize it was there. Oh, well.)