Tag: Cumulus

As Long As The Camera Was Out

This seemed like a good day to demonstrate the camera’s mount, so I brought “Clicky” outside, pointed toward the second floor window and fired away. With this setup do the neighbors think I’m a spy or perv or both?

As soon as I walked outside I knew this would be a good time lapse day. Cumulus clouds were building over Santiago Peak in the nearby Santa Ana Mountains. I suctioned my little NABI Square HD camera to the window in the master bath and pointed it skyward.

This seemed like a good day to demonstrate the camera’s mount, so I brought “Clicky” outside, pointed toward the second floor window and fired away. With this setup do the neighbors think I’m a spy or perv or both?

As I walked back toward the house I noticed a hummingbird at my feeder. It’s a little dark for hummingbird shots, but what the heck. Click, click, click, click.

Then I pointed the camera at a daylily near the front door.

The time lapse is dynamite. And, a few more shots for good measure!

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ready-for-dinner

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Time Lapse Of Some Very Cool Clouds

A few atmospheric features you don’t usually see showed up. Very cool.

tl:dr Watch the second or third video first.

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The plan was to post a time lapse video of our Irvine sky today. Disappointment. The movie was blah.

I looked more closely.

A few atmospheric features you don’t usually see showed up. Very cool.

In these movies you’re looking northeast. There’s a ridge line, then mountains around 12 miles away. When the direction and altitude are right, mountains cause turbulence, The smooth flow of the atmosphere is disturbed. Standing waves form.

The next thing you know you get lenticular clouds. They are lens shaped and virtually stationary. Without time lapse you might not realize they’re there.

Below you’ll find the full sky time lapse and two ‘zoom ins’ where you can concentrate on just the clouds. Enjoy!

Clouds Are Made For Timelapse

SoCal is normally a cloud free zone. Not today! Yesterday’s overcast (Do I get a refund off my mortgage?) was followed today by cumulus clouds. They are majestic, especially when sped up.

This time lapse was shot with my Canon 7D using Magic Lantern and edited in Adobe Premiere CS6. There’s plenty of resolution, so click the button in the lower right hand corner of the player and fill your screen.

I’m trying a new technique, so please let me know if the video isn’t playable in your browser.

Things You Can Learn From Clouds

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I’m going to put on my science teacher hat for a moment. I saw something cool. You might enjoy understanding what’s going on.

An hour ago I propped my tablet against the bathroom window to take a timelapse movie of the clouds&#185. The sky was filled with beautiful puffy cumulus clouds. On a realtime basis they were majestic and seemed to hover in place.

Not so when sped up by a factor of 150 (that’s one shot every five seconds). Now the sky is turbulent. Roiling!

Gil Simmons, who I used to work with at Channel 8, calls these COW clouds. COW for “cold-over-warm.” I’ve also heard the effect called “self defeating sunshine.”

There’s a larger than normal vertical temperature gradient over SoCal today. Earlier this afternoon the temperature dropped almost 10&#176 Fahrenheit between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. That’s the cause for the clouds–the cold-over-warm.

Later tonight you’ll have to climb from 4,500 to 11,000 feet for that same drop.

Since warm air is more buoyant than cold, it rises and condenses forming clouds. This warm air moving toward the cold is called convection. It’s how heat moves when you put a pot of water on the stove.

If you look carefully at the very top of some of the lower clouds in my timelapse you’ll see the convection in action. The clouds grow upward looking very much like the bubbles of water rising in that hot pot of water!

If it looks like the clouds are moving multiple directions at once, you’re right.

There is wind shear overhead. As the clouds gain altitude they move from a southwesterly flow to northwesterly. It was even more pronounced earlier today. That shear adds to the convective cloud buildup. In fact wind shear is a major factor we look at when predicting severe storms.

Too much for one day? I’ll stop now.

The atmosphere is amazing when you watch it up close. There is so much going on and explanations within the laws of physics for all of it.

&#185 – Try as I might I can’t figure out how to keep the Nexus 7 camera from refocusing from time-to-time. That’s why the shot goes out-of-focus a few times.