Some more cool looking skies

Hello you lot!

Appreciate the patience here, thanks for waiting for my post without running off. Unlike some that post openly on Facebook or something that they are off on holiday so someone can come round and rob their house (it has happened, Google it if you don’t believe me!), I thought it best to do this after I returned. I spent a very nice holiday in Bruges and, in time, with be posting the images on here; remember, they’re all posted in retrospect!

For now, I am posting a few more images of weird things in the sky. Some you have seen before, some you have not. I’m sorry if this is samey, but I can’t help but love the weather…I even managed to get some pictures of an awesome hail core from my hotel window when I was away!

In the first instance, there’s a familiar beast, a very pleasant sunset with a nice hint of pink for a twist. Don’t get that pink hue up so high too often so it was nice to see again.

Orange down under, pink above…the laws of optics in action

However, whilst I was there, my eye caught on some “cuckoo-spit” and I thought I would include that too just for interest and the fact that the macro mode on the camera is not very oft used! I looked this up and found the name of an insect that creates this and can’t say I have ever heard of it. This is apparently the protective covering for a froghopper nymph known as a “spittlebug”; yup, I had never heard of it either. I knew that it was a protective coating for something though, apparently created by the nymph feeding on the sap of whichever plant it is on which causes no real damage. Everyone’s a winner…

Ewwww! Someone’s spat on this plant! Oh, wait….

Next up is another better view of some Kelvin–Helmholtz instability (on the right hand side in the middle of the image, looks very much like a breaking wave side on) that I saw whilst out on my bike. Alas the background is a similar colour so, sorry, you may have to squint a little to see it!

It is there…honest. You may need to look closely or click the image to enlarge

Moving on to things you may not have seen and an image I have also passed on to WeatherNet for their competiton (will keep you informed), is a contrail shadow from a perfect conjunction between the old contrail and the setting sun with just enough darkness to make it stand out quite well. Quite a number of coincidences there, but pretty striking I thought.

Right place, right time with this shot

Last, but not least, is something I haven’t seen all that often, so hopefully you haven’t too which is some “jellyfish” clouds. On a very small scale and nothing like the ones found on the internet in more far-flung places than Pembrokeshire…

The proper term for jellyfish cloud is glaciation. Don’t say the internet never teaches you anything

Referring to my friends in Wikipedia again to explain this, the cause is thus “particles of ice found in high altitude clouds of the cirrus family, convective clouds and some mid-level clouds are mixed with supercooled droplets of water; they are associated with icing conditions that occur when an aircraft flies through the clouds and serve as a catalysis to the formation of ice crystals” which then fall as these fronds from the cloud.

I guess this means that if you are in a plane and you fly through these, you want to turn the heaters on?! Mind you, at sunset they looked pretty so I thought it worthwhile to pass the sighting on.

Well, that’s the lot for the time being so hope you liked it. More in the next few days. Back on the boat sailing this weekend too so will keep you up to date with that too.

See you soon!

Sorry for the silence!

Hello,

Apologies for the silence of late. I have meant to come on here to post some pictures for a little while but this has been delayed due to a number of reasons, mainly….

1) I was on holiday out of the country and

2) it was my birthday when I was

3) whisked away for a weekend in Somerset.

Due to this I have been away from the PC a fair amount. I also had prioritised the sending of images to a competition in the last couple of days, as there was a deadline attached.

I am, this evening, going to figure out what I am posting on the next entry but thanks for sticking with it, I shall be posting in the next few days.

Thanks again!

Some unusual phenomena…and sunsets!

Hiya!

I’m back again for another instalment of my usually skyward-gazing photographs from the skies over a quiet area of Pembrokeshire.

Before I forget, as I will probably, I will mention that I am once again entering the WeatherNet weather photography competition this year. I won a prize last year of, I think, £20 which is no kings ransom I admit, but it was nice to get some input. Mind you, I didn’t think the image I sent was particularly deserving but there we are. This year, I have sent some very nice ones and, whilst I’m no storm chasing pro, I think there’s some pretty awesome cloudscapes. I posted some on here a while back actually….in February this year; take a look. I seem to recall I entitled it the best storm cloud ever. How imaginative.

Anyway, back to the current pictures. The first couple I am not too sure about but I think there was some mild disturbance in the clouds called Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. Now, I never did get science at school so let me introduce Mr Wik E. Pedia with his explanation (all credit to the well-known online encyclopedia);

The Kelvin–Helmholtz instability can occur when there is velocity shear in a single continuous fluid, or where there is a velocity difference across the interface between two fluids. An example is wind blowing over water, the instability manifests in waves on the water surface. More generally, clouds, the ocean, Saturn’s bands, Jupiter’s Red Spot and the Sun’s corona show this instability.

Still confused? Me too. Basically, in this instance, it is waves and undulations in the clouds…

The instability I refer to can be seen just below the telegraph wire…blooming wires

This picture may show things a little more clearly. When people say that air should be treated as a liquid, this is where it all makes a bit more sense!

Just to the left of the pole, the instability looks like weak breaking waves and there’s some more above in the upper left of the picture

The next phenomena was a little more “normal” per se but quite nice nonetheless. Just a normal squall mixed with some blue sky and cirrus that I regularly watch and take pictures of to begin with, but I noticed that as I was watching, there was a distinct little “cell” (don’t know if I should refer to it as that to be honest, but for the purposes of the blog I will) off to the left of the frame…

Another Pembrokeshire squall…yawn. But what’s this off to the left of the frame?

Surprisingly, you could actually see this “cell” moving in a spiral manner. It was admittedly happening veeeeeeeeeeery slowly, but you can actually see in this frame that it looked a little like foamy water in a bath plug. Not quite rotating but nearly….

Is it a little rain cell? I think so…what do you think?

Pretty much bang overhead now and there is a distinct oval/circle formation here with lumpy cloud in the middle which was probably very mild mammatus, having seen this kind of thing on a larger scale on YouTube…

The shadows made the middle of the cell look quite dramatic in a way. If only it were more defined!

No rain came down from this over us, but I like to think it may have broken somewhere further away. Once it had moved off the light got better and most of the details were lost for the purpose of photography, which was a shame.

Back to my easy wins then! I love a good sunset and I have caught a good few nice ones of late, as well as some arcs and sundogs that will feature shortly. This one is just down the road in Sardis. Truth be told, I was in the wrong place to catch it properly so I had to make do with the less that ideal foreground. Mind you, I don’t think it’s all that bad…

Although the foreground is spoilt by people having the cheek to live there, the house nicely blocked the disc of the sun

A few days later, the air was still pretty clear and there were hardly any contrails around, so there was a rare full frame cirrus cloud that I took a snap of. Remember, this is how it appeared at the time, none of your digital manipulation here!

Simple, yet effective 🙂

Well, I hope that you found this a good distraction for a few minutes…I enjoyed taking the pictures anyway. I will keep you informed regards the competition but the closing date is late September so you will see another few posts before then.

That reminds me, I really must send the remainder of my shots! See you all soon, thanks for dropping in.