Pretty sunrises/sunsets ahead and that’s about it for October

Footnote

A warm, rainless October appears to be our fate, much like last year when only 0.01 inches fell.  Oh, me.  Our dryness since the end of July,  with so many cloudless skies, continues on and on.  Tough to take  if you’re cloud-centric.

However, this month, though likely rainless, promises to deliver some great sunrises and sunsets as weak regions of rising air  pass above  us in the days ahead, that rising air showing up as lots of middle and upper level clouds like Altocumulus,  Altostratus with virga, and CIrrus over many of the remaining days.  Those kinds of clouds can be associated with the most spectacular ones sunrises and sunsets.

I guess that’s something.

Below, a sample pretty scene for cloud-starved readers.

Taken by the Arthur on a University of Washington research flight in the early 1990s. The scene is the Willapa Bay Wildlife Refuge, Washington. We were studying the lifecycle of Cumulus clouds and the aerosol environments affecting them. On this calm day, Cumulus could form over the tiniest strips of warmer land. You would not see this scene on a windy day. So, the shot is not only “pretty”, but an unusual one.  I was so lucky to have seen so many pretty scenes in research!

 

The End

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Again, pardon the links to ads.  I have nothing to do with them.  Will make them go away via $$ in the days ahead.

 

By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.