2015: Starts With Snow

New Year's Eve was wet and cold in Tucson. Overnight the temperatures drop and snow fell in the local mountains and in the foothills. The snowline was higher than my home, which is at just over 2,100 feet of elevation. Nearby Sombrero Peak (officially called Safford Peak), which is often a backdrop to my hot air balloon shots, rises to an elevation of 3,563 feet.

As the morning grew brighter it was clear that there was a dusting of snow on the peak, perhaps down to about 3,000 feet or so. We haven't had snow this low since February 2013.

Looking in the other direction, we had a wonderful sunrise to start 2015:

Parhelia and Solstice Sunrise

Last Monday we had cirrus clouds that produced some wonderful sun dogs.

You can see them in the photo above. The sun is behind the palm tree and there's a rainbow of color with a bright light extending out was from the sun on either side.

Here's a closeup shot of the one on the right.

As the clouds changed the show evolved into a full 22 degree halo.

 Finally, we has a beautiful sunrise this morning. Not a bad way to mark today's winter solstice.

Yesterday's Cloud Time-Lapse

Here's a short iPhone time-lapse movie of the clouds yesterday afternoon:

Monsoon Sunsets

There is so much to love about Arizona's monsoon sunsets. We've had some good ones lately and quite often the view is just as great in the east as it is in the west.

Last Saturday night was a great example.

In the west was this cumulonimbus cloud that looks to me like a cartoon face seen in profile.

While that view was nice, the view to the east was even better with a nearly full moon rising above the remnants of storm clouds.

 Tonight was another great example of a sunset that was wonderful everywhere you looked.

To our northeast was this cumulonimbus that was catching the glow of sunset while dumping welcomed rains on the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Looking to the west a few minutes later and we were given a nice show of crepuscular rays that extended all the way to the east (making them anticrepuscular rays).

A wonderful sight!

Monsoon!

I have lived most of my life in the desert southwest where the air is usually clear and dry. Every summer, usually around Independence Day, the flow of the atmosphere shifts bringing humidity. The heat of the day and instability in the atmosphere generates thunderstorms.

You wouldn't think that someone who loves astronomy as much as I do would welcome our monsoon season, but I do. The clouds pretty much ruin astronomy in July and August. The weather is so bad that the professional observatories in the area usually shut down for maintenance. Even though the monsoons are bad for astronomy they are celebrated. I suspect that most people who have not lived in the desert would understand how everyone here gets excited about just the possibility of rain.

This year's thunderstorms in Tucson kicked off on Monday. Friday was another active day. Here's a time-lapse movie from Friday showing how it looked from the University of Arizona:

It was a pretty good storm. Parts of town got 2-3 inches of rain and the temperature at the airport dropped about 25 degrees. We have yet to get any measurable rain at our place (our time will come, hopefully soon), but this evening we had a wonderful lightning storm.

It was my first time with lightning photography in years. In fact, the last time I shot lightning I was shooting with film (Yes, I'm that old). Needless to say, I am pretty happy with how things turned out.

The trick to lightning photography is to make sure it is far enough away to be safe and that it's dark enough for timed exposures. Tonight was the perfect combination. Lightning is bright enough that setting your camera's speed to something slow, like 100, is perfect. It allows you to take long exposures without overexposing, while giving you plenty of opportunity to catch the lightning in the act.

Personally I like Nature's fireworks a whole lot more than the man-made fireworks of a few days ago. I managed to get a few shots that I liked and I have posted the good ones here.

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To get even more in a shot individual exposures can be combined with a program like StarStaX. Here's the two photos above, and another that had just a little bit of lightning. The resulting image is even nicer.

 Here are a few more individual frames that still look pretty good.

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And, if you made it down this far, here are a couple more stacked images. First 4 frames stacked:

And then 8 frames stacked:

I hope to shoot more lightning before the summer rains end and, if I do, you'll be seeing the pics here.

Snow in Tucson

By now most people have heard that Tucson, Arizona had snow yesterday. I think that everywhere at least had flakes coming down.  It certainly didn't stick everywhere though.

We did not have accumulating snow at our place, which is about 2,100 feet in elevation, but only a few hundred feet higher the snow was several inches deep.

Here's how nearby Sombrero Peak looked this morning.

 

Compare that view to yesterday's shot from the University of Arizona webcam pointed at the much higher (and much farther from the camera) Santa Catalina Mountains:

You don't often see snow going pretty much all the way down to the base of the mountains, but yesterday it did.

Snow in the Desert

Last night's winter "storm" in the Tucson area left a dusting of snow all the way down to elevations of about 3,000 feet. That's still higher than my location, but enough for just about all the local mountains to get some of the white stuff.

It is pretty normal for the Santa Catalina Mountains to get snow - they are over 9,000 feet in elevation, but the much lower Tucson Mountains rarely do. Yes, it does occasionally snow all the way down to the desert floor, but not very often.

Here's the view from my back yard this morning looking toward part of the Tucson Mountains. Sombrero Peak, seen in many of my hot air balloon shots did not get any snow. Maybe next time.