Weather Timelapse: Lenticular Clouds in the Eastern Sierra

A few nights ago I watched lenticular clouds form over the Three Sisters in the Sweetwater Range, across Topaz Lake on the California/Nevada border in the Eastern Sierra. It looked like a little sunset light might get through, so I took a few photographs, and set up my camera to capture a time-lapse sequence of several hundred more, so I could convert them into a video.

As the direct sunlight left the scene and the light faded towards the blue light of twilight, is looked like the cloud cover was too thick, and sunset simply wasn't going to happen.

Then a hint of orange started to appear, and brighten, at the bottom of the stack of clouds.



I reframed the image to capture detail of the evolving light over the Three Sisters.

The sunset light was brief, but intense, and the roughly 1000 photos that I took to capture the moment payed off!

I processed a few hundred of the images into a time-lapse video so you could see the whole event.  Here's the best edit I've produced so far:

Planets, Orionids and Zodiacal Light

Meteor with Venus, Jupiter and Mars rising in zodiacal light during the Orionids, October 22, 2015

Who saw or photographed some Orionid meteors over the last night or two?  In the photo above, a meteor crosses over the path of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, rising in zodiacal light during the Orionid meteor shower around 5 am this morning, October 22, 2015.

Although the streak is clearly a meteor (note the characteristic green color), technically it's not an Orionid, since the radiant point for the Orionid meteor shower is out of the upper right corner of the frame.  So this meteor is traveling at nearly a right angle to what its trajectory would be if it were one of the Orionids.

It may however be a Leo Minorid meteor, since its radiant point is to the left of Venus Jupiter and Mars this morning.  The Leo Minorid meteor shower peaks the morning of October 23, but it is a minor shower with an estimated 2 meteors per hour, but minor showers sometimes have an unexpectedly high rate, so tomorrow morning could offer a surprise from the Leo Minorids along with after-peak Orionids.

There are also random, sporadic meteors, particularly in the early morning, as your position on the earth rotates to the leading side of the earth as it travels through space rotating around the sun.

The Zodiacal light is sunlight shining off of dust in our solar system, the light tilted up from the lower left in the photo above.  You can experience the Zodiacal light, or false dawn, this time of year when a a pyramid-shaped glow can be seen in the east an hour before dawn's first light (or 80 to 120 minutes before sunrise). This light is caused by sunlight reflecting off of dust particles in space in the same plane as earth and can resemble the lights from a city. It is tilted to follow the same ecliptic plane that the planets travel in.  Zodiacal light is best seen under dark skies, in places with minimal light pollution.  You can catch the Zodiacal light for another 2 or 3 mornings this month, but after that the moon will be too full and it will no longer set early enough to leave you with a dark enough sky to see this pre-dawn light.

You can see the Zodiacal light as the planets rise in this time-lapse video captured this morning before and twilight light started to brighten the sky:

Venus, Jupiter and Mars in Zodiacal light during the Orionid meteor shower this morning

Seasons of Topaz

Seasons of Topaz, my latest time-lapse video,with "Sierra Wave" lenticular clouds, pogonip ice fog, rain, snow, sunrises, sunsets... a year's worth of weather in 3 minutes: http://youtu.be/W07_Yol2Ad4


The music, used with permission, is "Odyssey" (instrumental version) by The Wyld, as heard in the McDonald's commercials during the Sochi Winter Olympics.  Drop by their Web site for links to their social media pages where you can say "Hi": http://thewyldmusic.com/ 

Topaz Lake Sunrise

Spinning Top, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan (actually indoors for a couple of da.

Topaz Lake is one of those places that I rarely plan on being at when the light is best, but I often find myself there anyway as I make my way between Tahoe, Mono Lake, and Monitor and Ebbetts passes.

On this morning I was there in time to watch a nicely shaped Sierra Wave lenticular cloud gradually light up from orange to pink to white, and I stayed long enough to watch the warm morning sunlight slide down the foothills to the lake.


The only thing I regretted was not carrying my fishing rods down to the lake, as there were large trout feeding, taunting me just within casting distance. The lake straddles the California Nevada border, and although I was standing in Nevada facing California, I later determined that my California fishing license would have enabled me to take a few casts. Oh well, the fish will only be bigger when I return!