Sky Photo

I was going to skip today, but I finally got my iPhone and my iMac talking to each other and managed to download some photos. Yesterday the sky was spectacular and I didn’t have my camera with me. I can’t see the screen of my iPhone in bright light (same is true of my camera) so this was basically point it at the right part of the sky and guess where the trigger (also on screen) was.

The sky was unusual in that there was a retreating  edge of cloud to the north, which I couldn’t quite figure out. The evening weather show made it clear: there was a strong spiral low in the Gulf of Alaska to the south, and the blue sky was a clear air sector between two cloud bands. The spiral was turning in such a direction that the clear band moved over us from south to north. The photo was taken looking east, and the clouds thickened to opacity just to the left of the photo.

Clouds looking east, Fairbanks 9/26/12. The feathery stuff is cirrus, blending into altostratus farther to the left.

Alaska Sky

Just a picture today, of the Alaska sky last Saturday. It was an amazingly warm day for this time of year, especially after the sun came out.

What kind of cloud? Mixed, mostly what I would call cumulostratus with a fairly low solar illumination. This was taken near solar noon, looking southeast, but the sun was less than 30° above the horizon.

Rain Clouds

One of our assignments at Summer Arts Festival this year was to look at several paintings from one of the water color classes and use them as inspiration for something to write. One that appealed to me had heavy clouds over a mountain valley, and inspired this.

Beyond the clouds heavy with rain,
Beyond the blue we call the sky,
What galaxies! What nebulae!
What other worlds
Where clouds may float
Heavy with rain.