Cooler

05/06/12, 3:30 pm, looking northwest

Seasonable temperatures today with highs in the mid-70's and lows in the 50's. Cool, cloudy and rainy all the day until late afternoon when it began to clear. You can see one break in the clouds in this watercolor in the upper right.


This is more like what May is usually like: rain, vibrant green grass, irises, peonies and honeysuckle blooming, mulberries ripening, and birds feeding their babies.

Raining

01/09/12, 1:30 pm, looking south

Today's clouds are full of rain, low and completely blanket the sky. Looking in most directions, there is little variance in the pale gray clouds but there were occasional shifts in dark and light like this one.


It is a cool day in the low 40's with  bone-chilling damp and frequent showers. It feels like these showers should be sleet, but no, just rain.

Rain and nimbostratus clouds

Nimbostratus clouds are our friendly gray rain clouds. They are low clouds with undulating dark and light masses of soft cloud hanging over our heads.  Nimbostratus form along warm fronts due to the slowly rising air. 


The nimbostratus clouds often have a layer of pannus clouds below them. Pannus is a massed layer of multiple fractus clouds. 


These dark nimbostratus rain clouds covered the sky on Saturday, September 17th for most of the day. It was wonderful to watch them moving and changing shape and color.