Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Environment

Real Time Lightning Monitor

Lightning Monitor

I ran across this interesting site last week while surfing. Blitzortung is a near real-time display of recent lightning strikes worldwide. The image above was from yesterday, but I just checked the site a few minutes ago and there is a line of strikes across the southeast US as I write this.

The color of the individual strike pixels is time-dependent; white indicates very recent strikes (less than 20 minutes), while dark red indicates oldest (up to two hours old). As you watch the display, each strike is surrounded by an expanding circle for a second or two. The green radial lines each extend to the location of a detector in the network reporting the recent strike and are also only displayed a short time.

I recall from my piloting days a device called a “storm scope” which also reported azimuth and distance information for lightning strikes. It was much less expensive than airborne radar and was effective for guiding aircraft around the more intense storms. Blitzortung is the first on-line display of this nature that I have found.

24 Nov 2014 by Environment Technobabble

Sunset Colors

Sunset Colors

This sunset image was in the file from a week ago. We get a lot of nice, colorful sunsets like this year around. Luckily, we didn’t have a dense cloud cover for yesterday’s eclipse.

The weekend forecast is for more clear skies and we will be looking the International Space Station tomorrow evening. At our location, the ISS will pass over just before seven PM AZ time. I might try and photograph the passing, but no guarantees. 😉

Click on the image to enlarge.

24 Oct 2014 by Arizona Environment Photography

Gas Guzzler vs. Economy Car?

Big and Little Gas

On our way into Southern Cal today, we passed this RV that was towing one of those funny (and ugly) little economy cars. I guess the mindset being that if we burn x gallons per mile getting where we go, we can make up for it by cramming ourselves into our towed ride which gets beaucoup miles per gallon and tour the local area after parking the big dude in the RV park. I think that unless they drive hundreds and hundreds of miles locally, they may not completely offset each other’s gas consumption.

Now, don’t get me wrong – we all know the energy “crisis” is a complete fraud and I have no problem with consumers consuming whatever resources thy can afford. We do the same when we travel. It just seems to me that if you’re going to consume “precious” resources, that you should be towing a Hummer and not that pathetic little Nissan POS. Just sayin’.

29 Sep 2014 by Environment Travel Wanderlust

The New Red

green.pngI forget where I found this graphic. Maybe at The Patriot Post. At any rate, I like the not-so-subtle comparison of the current administration to the Communist Party.

The EPA and other .gov agencies, the media and the hard left (but I repeat myself) continually foist the Global Warming Climate Change Climate Disruption nonsense on the public knowing full well that it is all unmitigated bovine feces. The whole charade is merely a method to allow government to gain control over energy resources because, obviously, it is ALL about government gaining control with progressives.

I found the following snark in the Patriot Post Daily Digest for Friday:

Comedian Jimmy Fallon:

“The federal government is starting to plan for climate change by making extended forecasts that can help people plan for extreme weather — because what can go wrong when you combine the efficiency of government with the accuracy of weathermen?”

26 Sep 2014 by Environment Global Warming Greenbats Whacko Politics

Isolated Rain Showers

Rain Shower

We had a fairly long drive today, since we usually try to keep the travel time to under four hours. Today, we had an almost five-hour drive from Bishop, CA, to Kingman, AZ. Yay! Back in free America.

During the last few miles of the trip, we saw several isolated rain showers off to the right or left of our route. This one, was off to the south of I-40 as we passed through the outskirts of the Kingman area.

We looked on the NWS sites and think that we won’t encounter much more than a few showers on our way back home tomorrow. The route is good highway (I-40 and US 93) back home and mostly above the flood potential. We will see . . .

Click on the image to enlarge.

17 Sep 2014 by Arizona Environment Wanderlust

Monsoon Glory

Monsoon Glory

Crepuscular rays swept the sky this afternoon just an hour before we had a nice late afternoon monsoon pass over the area. This actually was the follow-up to monsoons that swept through Wickenburg early this morning – like at four in the morning with lots of rain, lightning and thunder. It was quite the wake-up call, although we did get to sleep again to wake at our regular time. Click on the image to enlarge.

04 Sep 2014 by Arizona Environment Photography

A Solar Optics Rainbow Cloud

Rainbow Cloud

Earlier today, I saw this cloud in the sky to the south that was lit up like a rainbow from the glancing rays of sunlight. It was an amazing little puff of rainbow color floating high in the sky. I grabbed my camera and got this image. Click on the image to enlarge.

From EarthSky:

These colorful clouds are called iridescent clouds, and the phenomenon is called cloud iridescence or irisation. The term comes from Iris, the Greek personification of the rainbow. It’s similar to the colors you might see when oil lies on the surface of a puddle of water. When you see a cloud like this, you know there are especially tiny ice crystals or water droplets in the air. Larger ice crystals produce solar or lunar halos, but tiny ice crystals or water droplets cause light to be diffracted – spread out – creating this rainbow-like effect in the clouds.

25 Aug 2014 by Arizona Environment Photography

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