This is simply fascinating to see for so many reasons. Will Campbell (over on his blog [sic] – see the posts here and here for background), who has been doing some fun experiments with his camera and computer to make time-lapse photography (you’ll recall an amusing one from before) has captured an entire day of cloud formation in the skies above some mountains near Los Angeles during the heatwave day of Sunday.
Click the still to go to the site with the movie (or find it at YouTube here):
It is both beautiful, interesting (scientifically and otherwise) and frustrating (why don’t those thunderclouds come down over here and rain on us – please?!) [Update: There was a fire in the area near the end of that day and some have pointed out that the darker stuff near the end might be partly smoke.]
Well done Will, and thanks!
Enjoy.
-cvj
I was in L.A. from NYC over this very hot Labor Day weekend. I was admiring the cloud formations forming over the mountains while I was driving around with my girlfriend. So I was very happy to see the link to this video yesterday capturing that experience in such a beautiful way. Thanks much.
Dear Clifford: That’s funny, but no, the only thing coincidental with last year is that message! (Thanks, I had forgotten about it :-)). Etna’s behavior last year, starting in the summer, was already weird compared to the previous years, and this year, her behavior is very different than last year. The plates that Etna is sitting on are twisting, maybe causing the ‘pipes’ to sample different mantle reservoirs. (?)
Will: Thank you again for that video. It motivated me to get out my weather book and learn which clouds are formed at which altitude, and why. Fun stuff.
Thank you so much Clifford for mention of my cloud timelapse videoclip. I’m quite pleased with results given the gamble I took.
Hi Amara,
Have a look at my Labour day post of last year (“Hot Holiday Weekend”) and note something about the content of the comments. Familiar? She’s Baa-ack!
-cvj
Finalmente! A nice lava fountain and flow in progress at Mt. Etna.
I really loved seeing that time-lapse photography of the cumulonimbus clouds form from the bottom up. Here’s how such clouds look (I’m sorry, no time-lapse photography…) from top down over Germany two weeks ago. These were saturated enough to drench 2200 Goldschmidt 2007 conference scientists for over half of the week.