Unlikely Soundtrack for Cloudspotters

    Now more than ever I look forward to my transcontinental flights--even on the "busiest travel weekend of the year" and even when it means leaving the West Coast before dawn and taking non-direct flights. I am aggressive about getting my A-group boarding passes on Southwest Airlines so I can be assured of getting a window seat (south side of plane) without a wing-obstructed view. I keep my camera in my lap and as soon as we hit 10,000 feet, I am ready to photograph the clouds. 

   The clouds at sunrise on Wednesday morning were incredible (above)--even through a double layer of my not-to-clean plastic window. What you are mostly seeing here of altocumulus clouds--a mid-level cloud that hangs out between 6,500 ft. and 18,000 ft. But of course these aren't just altocumulus. They are altocumulus stratiformis opacus duplicatus. They are stratiformis because they cover a large area (as far as my eye could see here); they are opacus because they blocked the sun; and they are duplicatus because just below them--and out of the photograph because we hadn't hit cruising altitude yet--is a parallel layer of these altocumulus clouds.
   What I experienced (but most of my sleeping-upright-with-their-mouths-open family did not) were the few moments where our plane flew in between the two layers. It was stunning and surreal and made more so by the fact that at the space where the clouds seemed to meet on the horizon (the vanishing point) was suffused with orange light of the sunrise.
  It was like flying inside a grilled-cheese sandwich. The bread represents the two parallel layers of  clouds;  the orange cheese, the sunlight; the plane, a small piece of aluminum foil that accidentally got in the cheese.
   So it's not poetic, but the image works for me. I hope you never look at a grilled-cheese sandwich the same. 
    The Friday after Thanksgiving, I was planning to head into D.C. to see an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art called Spencher Finch: My Business with the Cloud. I had read a review of the exhibit by this American artist/photographer/collagist and was intrigued by the photograph (above) of Passing Cloud (2010) I had seen in a magazine review.

    Finch created this massive cloud, which hangs from the grand rotunda of the gallery, to recreate the same kind of refracted light that shone on one day in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln and poet Walt Whitman crossed paths on a nearby street. Visitors to the museum are invited to walk under this historical artificial cloud and experience the shifting quality of light and changing colors found when walking under a real cloud. I wanted to walk under the cloud and enjoy the ensuing lofty thoughts, historical insights, and assorted epiphanies, but the more I thought about driving downtown to see a fictitious cloud made out of...Scotch tape, I decided to take a walk outside instead. I'm glad I did.

     Not only were there clouds, there was a lot of ch'i. The trees and clouds were putting a nice show (above). Everything was moving and energetic and uplifting in a way Scotch tape will never be.

    I walked briskly while taking photographs of the sky and trees and looking for the cloud du jour. There is always one.

     These cumuls fractus (above) were not the one, but coming from the land of evergreens, this ganglia tanglia of delicate deciduous branches was a refreshing sight.

   Nor were these fabulous cumulus humilis (above) the real show stoppers. Luckily, I needed to work off the five pieces of pie I had to sample at Thanksgiving dinner, so I kept walking. I was out for a good half hour before I found them (below).

      These cumulus clouds (fractus and humilis) were blowing in from the West and doing a wild burlesque as they alternately covered and revealed the glories of the sun. This is about the tenth photograph from a series I took shooting straight into the sun. I was so happy with the curvaceous "silver-lining" of the darkened cloud below and the iridescence of the windswept clouds above them that I actually jumped up and down with excitement. 

  I was not so happy with the 1977 hit tune that was uploaded into my inner ear as I was waiting for the black spots to fade from in front of my eyes. Oh, you know the song. "Blinded by the Light" sung Manfred Mann's Earth Band (but written by Bruce Springstein).

  Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.

     But Mama, that's where the fun is.

Clouds in Unlikely Places

   "It never snows here."  This is what us newcomers were told four years ago when we moved to the Pacific Northwest. It has snowed every year, and not just a dusting. Our first storm arrived yesterday and wintery temperatures in the 20s. Watching the snow fall and swirl to earth made me feel like I was inside a snow globe. Trying to get around in it this morning, however, was delightful but only if you were walking in sturdy boots. I was out walking the dog and noticed this strange pattern (above and below) in the untrammeled snow on my road. I don't think I'm the only one who sees these patterns as cloud-like--even altocumulus-like. Altocumulusesque if you like.

  Somehow, I focussed my eyes just so and my gait just so and before I knew it I almost had vertigo from the sensation of flying above this blanke of "clouds" as if I were in an airplane looking down. It's a bit hard to recreate that feeling from these small photographs, but you get the idea.

  This was the sky just after dawn this morning. The gentle winds aloft seemed to be sculpting these clouds.
It was lovely to have such a beautiful sunny and cloud-filled day after the gray snowy skies.
  And, since clouds seem to be appearing just about everywhere these days, look at what the folks in Bend, Oregon, are producing! (below)

This is the label of the Deschutes Brewery's "Inversion" India Pale Ale. Look at those clouds! What's the connection to an inversion you might ask. This beer will not inspire you to stand on your head or do other party tricks. No, the folks at Deschutes Brewery are much cleverer than that. According to the label:

"Here is Oregon's High Desert, seasonal changes often bring about a peculiar weather phenomenon--an inversion. The higher up the mountain you go, the sunnier it gets. So even when Bend is covered in clouds, the faithful know where to find clarity."

  Maybe a bit too clever, eh? I turn to my favorite Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate by Michael Allaby for the science. An inversion is the "condition in which the air temperature increases with height, rather than decreases." This is an inversion of the normal condition of air cooling with height.
   So, while you are climbing Mount Hood or the Three Sisters with your six-pack of IPA, the air gets warmer as you climb up (not just because of your load). Inversions are common in areas surrounded by mountains. The mountains restrict the movement and mixing of air so that the cool (heavier) air is trapped below the layer of clouds while the sun is warming the air above the clouds.
   This IPA is a delicious beer. The label art is fun and meteorologically interesting. But, I must say, I prefer to hang out with heathens who find clarity in the clouds.

The Pacific Northwest is....

...any place a salmon can get to," says Seattle writer Timothy Egan.
   This weekend a very large salmon migrated from the mural on the side of Olympia's Capitol Theater to our kitchen wall. The salmon had no dams to navigate, but was channeled through our digital camera, laptop, and projector before it reached its new home.

  

  Because I can't draw or paint worth beans, I traced the projected salmon on the wall (above), found some leftover wall paint and some tubes of acrylics from another project, and my husband and I started painting (below).

   When we realized this was going to be fun, we also found the wine. Notice the touches of merlot near the caudal fin!

Here it is in all it's salmoniid glory!  We will be adding details--and a few school mates--to the wall this winter. Now back to clouds!

A Study in Gray

   Here are the shreds of a cloud shortly after one of yesterday's downbursts. The shreds, technically called, pannus, are the spent undersides of a rain cloud--either nimbostratus or cumulonimbus. The sky was full of them yesterday. They are not particularly photogenic clouds, but worth documenting to show that the sky is never quite a dull and gray as everyone thinks. Except when it is (below).

   My assignment yesterday was to finish writing about my Swim in Stratus (an earlier blog) and to photograph a sky that was "Unmitigated Gray." I accomplished both. The sky is rarely this solid gray, but yesterday, just after sunset, it was.

     And because I managed to download the user's guide to my dinky Canon Digital Elph camera, I figured out how to set the camera for long exposures. Here are photographs I took last night around 9:30 from my front yard. Still lots of fine-tuning to do to capture the clouds and freeze their flight across the sky. Eventually I will get that perfect combination of shutter speed and ISO setting to capture the nighttime clouds. 

 In the photo above, the blurry clouds in the upper right are lower stratus clouds that were moving quite quickly--more quickly that the higher levels of non-blurry stratus.

   This photo captures some of the pink light from Olympia (probably the highschool stadium lights) in the West. Or maybe it's the aurora borealis!  Wishful thinking at this latitude.

   This exposure captured some of the starts in the northeast portion of the sky. I tried to lighten up the photo a bit, but the next lighter setting made it look like a bad daytime picture. I'll keep working on it.
   And I thought the marbled murrelet made for exhausting research! At least they hunker down after between dusk and dawn. The clouds do not. They are a 'round the clock spectacle. I knew this, but usually go outside at night to look at the stars or moon. It seems our skies often clear late in the day or at night--often when I have come in for the day. I am thinking cloud-watching at night will make the long winter nights pass by quickly. Perhaps too quickly.