Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Fire Of Sunset

Wow, talk about dry! KBJC had a nice katabatic wind event this morning, mixing the already dry-as-a-bone atmosphere down to 1% humidity. The temperature was 57ºF with a dewpoint of -38ºF ... that's a dewpoint depression of 95º. I don't think I've ever seen that far of a spread before. That's one of those days where you take off your sweater and start a forest fire!


KBJC (Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport) is dead-center in the image below (click for larger)


High clouds moved over the area over night, leaving bleak, overcast conditions throughout the day. In addition to the high cirrus, a huge wave cloud set up. I kept reminding myself all day to make sure and catch the sunset.

By the time sunset was approaching, the wave started to disintegrate, which saddened me. However, some nice lenticulars had shaped up to the north. I had camera and tripod handy, so I got up on the roof and started taking shots. I went completely into manual mode on my point-and-shoot. This was the first time I've done that for anything except lightning. It was kind of exciting and I experimented a lot before running out of batteries. (I thought I had an extra pair, but did not.) I took quite a few photos, however, and I'll share a couple.






Sorry about the horrendously off-center placement of the watermarks.

Tweaked contrast, saturation, brightness, and added 'watermark'.

Dann.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That first shot of the lenticulars is a real beaut, I can't get enough of em.
What kind of camera are you using? Seems to do a very nice job.

Dann Cianca said...

Thanks Pat! I'm using a Canon Powershot A710 IS.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=183&modelid=14117

sknr31 said...

I didn't notice this obs thanx for pointing it out....that is really impressive....57 and an hour 17 degrees crazy and it seems to be in the wrong places....oh well that's CO for you....

Dann Cianca said...

That's the cool part, Skinner, it was a valid ob. We had katabatic winds off the mountains. The atmo was already really freaking dry, and this mixed out almost every last molecule of water!