An Amazing 360 Degree Sunset

Saturday evening the air was full a developing cumulus and the eastern horizon was dominated by the cirrus blowing off from thunderstorms over the mountains and eastern Washington.  So it was the perfect time to head to a local hill to view the sunset...and I was not disappointed.

The mid-level convection took on a red glow with beautiful definition of the rising turrets.  As with the other cumulus clouds that day, the base of the clouds was not at the surface, but several thousand feet aloft.

As the sky darkened, I noted something else that made my jaw drop...the shadows of the clouds were being projected on the cirrus over the eastern horizon.  And as the sun lowered, the shadows loomed larger and larger.

And that was not all, beams of sunlight traversed the sky from the sunset to the shadows (see below).  If you were religious it was like a symbol of divine presence.  One person commented to me that it looked like the hand of god with an outstretched finger.  Such metaphysical matters are beyond my competence

It was quite a show and there was a whole group of us on the top of the hill at Magnuson Park watching the spectacular 360 degree display.

And as the sky darkened, shallow mid-level convection become more apparent, with the red glow of the thunderstorm cirrus behind.  We were all profoundly impressed.

Why watch noisy planes when nature is putting on such a show?

This summer will be remembered for many things here is Seattle, but rarely have there been so many amazingly colorful sunsets.  

2014, the Summer of Sunsets.  

You will tell your grandchildren about it one day.

Thunderfest Over Western Washington

As advertised, there is a lot of lightning and thunder around western Washington this morning, particularly over central Puget Sound and the mountains.

We have some fairly unstable air over us....meaning that with a little lift, convection (including thunderstorms) can form.  And we had the lift in the form of a weak upper level disturbance (a short wave trough) moving through this AM.   The images from the UW cam showed the development of the convection (the images run from around 5:30 AM to 9:30 AM.

Most of this convection was high-based and only light rain reached the surface.  Here is a wonderful picture from local meteorologist Mark Stoelinga that beautifully illustrated the mid-level bases of the thunderstorm and the evaporating rain falling out of it:

You can see the convection in the latest visible image (11 AM).  Most impressive storms are over the Cascades. You can also see low stratus along the coast.

The latest NWS/NOAA HRRR (high-resolution rapid refresh) forecast suggests that the southern/central Puget Sound convection should now be dying off....so SeaFair fun should be fine after 1-2 PM.

Yesterday afternoon we had a REAL thunderstorm over the central Cascades that reached 45,000 ft--unusual for our region, which usually experiences wimpy thunderstorms.

Here is the visible satellite picture at 4 PM Friday and the radar echo top product a half-hour earlier from the Camano Is radar.   You see the yellow color--45K feet or higher!

As noted in my earlier blogs, there is a lot of potential for lightning-initiated fires with this short wave passage.  Here is the lightning strikes for a half-hour ending 10 AM...the central Cascades are getting lit up.

Update:  Some of the lightning appears to have taken out power to several thousand Seattle City Light Customers.  Here is the 1 PM map: