weatherdan's PhotoBlog

Lightning May 7th 2006 2-6

2006-12-12T16:13:59Z

This is from one of the best lightning storms I've ever seen. That night I captured 5 of my best lightning shots.

Lightning May 7th 2006 1-6

2006-12-12T14:38:35Z

This is from one of the best lightning storms I've ever seen. That night I captured 5 of my best lightning shots.

Grand Forks Sunset

2006-12-11T14:28:31Z

This was my break today. Sadly my only break. After working on Calc 2 for 7 hours straight and finally figuring out 2 homework problems the sunset was a great break.

Sunrise to sunset Sundogs were in the sky

2006-12-11T13:37:41Z

Usually I've seen sundogs last maybe 15 minutes to an hour. In Grand Forks, ND today it was sunrise to sunset with sundogs visible. I've never seen them last that long. Plus there was a circumzenithal arc also visible more or less have of the day. Although it was really, cool. It's been freezing outside, the wind chill hasn't been above zero all day. What is a sundog? Well sundogs (parhelia, mock suns) are, with the 22º halo, the most frequent of the halos. Look for them, especially when the sun is low, at each side and about 22° away. This is the same distance or more than the common circular halo. Sundogs reveal that the clouds are hosting horizontal plate crystals. These plates drift slowly downwards like leaves with their large faces almost horizontal.

Moon and Coronas

2006-12-11T14:14:13Z

Here are some photos of the moon and a Corona around the moon from Monday Dec 4th. The moon is pretty blurry because I was shooting through clouds. But the coronas are turned out. a Lunar coronae are much more familiar than those around the sun. They are seen when the clouds are thin enough that each single corona light ray reaching the eye is scattered or diffracted by only one droplet. Of course, the whole corona is made by a great many droplets individually scattering the moonlight.

Light Pillars over Grand Forks

2006-12-11T14:00:02Z

Columns of light apparently beaming directly upwards from unshielded (and wastefully polluting) lights are sometimes visible during very cold weather. Plate shaped ice crystals, normally only present in high clouds, float in the air close to the ground and their horizontal facets reflect light back downwards.

Hail??? Sleet??? nope just Graupel

2006-12-11T14:44:15Z

These are some photos of graupel "snow pellets" from this morning, they were taken right before my Calc II started at 9am. Graupel is heavily rimed snow particles, often called snow pellets; often indistinguishable from very small soft hail except for the size convention that hail must have a diameter greater than 5 mm.

Stillwater Sunset

2006-12-11T14:59:36Z

These were taken from the end of the driveway by my house.

Grand Forks Sunset

2006-12-11T16:16:00Z

The past few days the camera is starting to come out again for weather photography. For the most part it was a cool sunset with some nice cloud formations.

Northern Lights

2006-12-11T16:42:59Z

They always seem to just blow up with no warning. This morning, I'm talking midnight, they decided to flare up and create an incredible display. Of course, the display was right before the cameras went up. After about an hour of sitting out in the cold wind and being exhausted from the day, I headed back to my dorm around 1:30am. Below are some pictures I took of October 1, 2006 Northern Lights display.