Tonight’s Weird Sky
Posted on January 31, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 38 Comments
I’m not 100% sure what the clouds were doing tonight, but it was more than a little ominous. Although as I understand it the real bad weather is later in the week, when we’re going to get up to two feet of snow in a couple of days. Hopefully actually not that much.
How’s the weather in your part of the world?
— JS
What you are seeing are virga. Snow flakes falling from the clouds and evaporating before reaching the ground.
As far as my weather: delightfully cold and lots of snow!
Oh Wow!
Grey skies with smudges of dusty pink galah in Canberra today.
To take a line from Dylan Moran: “Fierce mild” in San Diego.
We had a nice little earthquake yesterday morning — does that count?
I’m old enough to remember Damnation Alley, with George Peppard.
We just finished shoveling 11″ but, it will be in the 40s by Wednesday so things are looking up.
Not as cool looking as yours. That’s awesome! We’re due for clouds tomorrow and temperatures plummeting to 60F for the high by Wednesday. Yeah, Arizona. We’re weird.
Dude, that would make an awesome book jacket. Just sayin’.
How’s the weather? We just had a “cold” spell in South Florida – iguanas falling from the trees cold – but compared to the foot of snow we missed back home in New York, this was a picnic.
I’m not sure if links work, but if they do here’s the weird weather thing that had my attention before I saw your post:
https://www.wral.com/longest-lightning-bolt-record-477-miles-over-3-states/20109095/
That looks like virga (rain that doesn’t hit the ground) to me.
Blizzard, gale force winds from north west 69-90 km/hour. -10 C feels like -26C. Whiteout conditions 😢
Huh. So Satan Himself is visiting you.
Weather here: chilly, slightly cloudy.
Wouldn’t it be fun if everyone said WHERE they are experiencing their weather? [ Please give me concrete info, I’m neurodivergent thx ]
60s today and Tuesday, cold and snow late Tues night and Wednesday.
Same here next door in south central Indiana (The Stupid State): Up to 2’ forecast but ultimately we’ll be lucky to see 6”. VERY lucky if that’s all. I don’t want a bunch of snow!
Seeing as I’m in North-east Ohio (about 20 miles SE of Akron), not too different, although your sky is way cooler. We’re only supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow, but we are supposed to get about the same amount of ice Wednesday into Thursday. I don’t mind snow but I purely hate ice. Ask us again on Friday, & I’ll let you know how it went. I hope you all stay safe in this weather.
Funny, I was thinking Damnation Alley but the Roger Zelazny version.
Kind of wonder what he would have made of the actual talking–and at least partially–self driving cars, especially the Waymo.
Digging out in the Northeast here. Not really looking forward to the arrival of Two Feet of Snow Part Two later this week.
That’s two feet of snow plus possible ice storm (?) at the end of the week on top of the 20 inches or so that we got on Saturday. Things to look forward to. Like getting above the freezing temperature tomorrow.
Old weather guy agrees – virga. The sfc prog has a cold front on your doorstep by Feb 2 – pure Canadian deep-frozen air. Bring in your iguanas.
Pappenheimer
My weather = N Pacific high stalled offshore the PAC NW, warming air locally. No snow shovels needed.
Pappenheimer
I’m in the Inland Empire (inland SoCal near I-15) and it’s 51F at 2150 with a high of 63F. We’re having cold Santa Ana winds for a few days, so dry as heck. We’ll have humidity in single digits.
Nice virga you have there. It’s not uncommon here.
On holiday – 3 hours at the beach in temperatures 25C/77F today; but it’s about to rain for the next few days. So much for the holiday at the beach!
Jeez. Tempted to steal that for book cover art. 😄
A day later but still the same, clear and cold here in western NY. That’s OK, I feel better when it’s cold. Thanks for the very dramatic sky. Ours was just pretty.
Actually, that is a rather spectacular shot.
It reminds me of an interesting display of lightning we saw late one summer evening where lightning seemed to crawl across the bottom of the clouds like waves on a shore.
It’s going to be a beautiful high 60s and sunny here in central Alabama today. Cloudy and mid-60s tomorrow. 70 and thunderstorms on Thursday (low of 42) – you’re facing 1+ feet of snow, we might get tornados.
(I haven’t seen any warnings yet about potential severe weather Thursday, but anytime we have a 30ish degree temperature drop with a front, I get a little concerned. That’s winter and spring, and late fall, in the SE!)
Clearly it’s an omen calling for you to bust out a guitar and play a cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCM4_5uB1ww
Seasonally chilly (for the DMV), expecting rain later this week.
We had 6+ inches of snow. Fortunately my neighbor plowed me out. My driveway is about as long as yours, but goes straight uphill (both ways!) with a right angle bend. And so far I haven’t been able to hire a snow-plower.
Today, however, is sunny and above freezing, so maybe some of it will melt before the next assault.
Here in SW West Virginia it was down in the single digits over the weekend, looking for 60s today, tho. Tiny pond was frozen, dogs couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get a drink, I was surprised their tongue didn’t stick to the ice.
Saturday night at bedtime it seemed to be chilly in the house, when I looked into it, the furnace was blowing cold air. I had replaced the AA batteries in the thermostat back in fall, so I turned off the system at the thermostat and carried some logs up from the woodpile under the back deck.
Then before starting a fire in the wood stove I turned things back on, and miracle of miracles, she started up and the gas fire lit first thing. Hurray! Just like a Windoze computer, if it ain’t right, turn it off, wait a few minutes for things to discharge, and restart things. Been running well ever since.
The weather guys on TV are calling for an ice storm sometime soon. Being retired, with canned goods and frozen stuff and such, we’ll pull through somehow. Brrrr. We have had arctic bursts down into the –20-25 range in the past , which could be bad…
I agree with Steve. I think that would be an awesome book cover.
We’re entering First Spring.
It’s a southern thing.
There’s a cover.
Getting back to our normal temps of 70’s during the day and 60’s at night after that last front that moved through and created iguana-cicles.
To reference two commenters above:
I have lived on the Great Plains for decades, and I am still reminded of Damnation Alley (book version, although I too saw the movie, with my cousin crying, “Killer cockroaches!”) To me “real life,” aka “television,” is still the benign west coast.
Zelazny must have visited the prairies and thought, ‘Wow, I could write this into a book.’
How nice to be among nerds who can perceive “life imitating art.”
Looks like a particularly memorable book cover…
Here we have been having rain since saturday. Rain, light rain, burning sun, thunderstorm, rain all Day, aaaannnd repeat. Then lunch and repeat again.
Summer in São Paulo, Brazil :)
that image… like you photographed my soul… the looming storm and the chaos within… I need lunch
here in NYC… light to medium gunfire in Manhattan into the overnight with a 2% chance of a school shooting in the suburbs
…whereas I got word from TX that many localities have begun to quietly cancel vacations for first-responders — RD-FD-PARA — given uncertainty if the powergrid will stay up… and there is not a single gasoline can available anywhere
It has been a relatively normal Austin TX winter so far. The storm bringing heavy snow to the Scalzi homestead is forecast to deliver the Austin area freezing rain and its coldest temperatures since the great Texas freeze of February 2021. The meteorologists, utilities and entities that oversee utilities say it will not be a repeat of last year; however, they were all wrong a year ago. Fingers crossed that power stays on.