A Sun Pillar Over Maine

[Denny]

[djm]

Would you care to refract that statement?

djm

[SteveShaw]

Here's a photo of a solar pillar that I took from my garden, looking towards Widemouth Bay in Cornwall, on October 13. We see these maybe five or six times a year around here. You see them best if you avert your gaze slightly to one side (even works with photos). Shame about the aeroplane contrail that wouldn't go away! I've always been interested in clouds and optical phenomena in the atmosphere, and maybe I'll post some more of my pics occasionally.

Steve

[djm]

Something really cool I have seen from time to time is large piling clouds on the horizon that seem to have a mirror reflection of themselves about 2/3 of the way down. Naturally, I never have a camera to hand when I come across these things. Typical.

djm

[Denny]

yeah, these too!

[djm]

I have seen mammatas clouds several times. The lenticular and "hole-punch" clouds look spectacular in the photos. Incredible that someone gets paid to stare at clouds all day.

djm

[amar]

yeah, these too!

Mammatus clouds? hahaha...love it.

[The Weekenders]

You guys have funny clouds. We just have the basic models for the most part here in Calaforny, except maybe in the Sierra...Never seen a sun pillar, that's for sure.

[Jennie]

We call them sun dogs. In winter I used to see them fairly frequently when I lived up north. A meteorologist told me they're caused by tiny ice crystals that form into plates (as opposed to spikes) and orient themselves horizontally in the air, like falling leaves. Then they reflect only in one direction, and look like pillars.

Made sense to me...

Jennie

[djm]

I'm not sure sun dogs and sun pillars are quite the same (though I could be mistaken). Sun dogs usually appear as you describe, but to the left or right of the where the sun itself appears - following or "dogging" the sun. The photo of the sun pillar does not suggest that it appears anywhere but at the actual place where the sun appears.

djm

[Mitch]

Hey Denny, do you recall the shot of a single knot-hole cloud in the 70's - i beleive San Francisco? It was the only cloud in the sky at the time of the shot.

It made the newspapers for a coule of days.

[Denny]

Hey Denny, do you recall the shot of a single knot-hole cloud in the 70's - i beleive San Francisco? It was the only cloud in the sky at the time of the shot.

It made the newspapers for a coule of days.

Ah, no...

I wasn't following the news much for a while then!

[SteveShaw]

A sun-dog, or mock sun, is not the same as a sun pillar. Sun-dogs ("parhelions") appear 22° to the left and the right of the sun, at the same height above the horizon as the sun, when the sun shines through cirrus or cirrostratus cloud consisting of ice crystals of a suitable orientation. Sometimes the sun has a halo with a radius of 22° when it shines through such clouds. The moon too sometimes. When the sun is fairly near the horizon, sun-dogs may appear at the two points at which this halo is dissected by the circumzenithal arc. Rarely, a 46° halo is observed around the sun as well as the 22° halo. The photo below shows the upper part of the 22° halo and two sun-dogs. The top of the halo also exhibits another phenomenon, the tangential arc.





Steve

[brewerpaul]

Spotted a moon column last night when the moon was a few degrees above the horizon. At first I thought it was an artifact in my car's fogged side window, but it remained when I rolled the window down.

[Joseph E. Smith]

I took this photo of a super cell in 1991, as it hovered over Chamberlain SD. This storm eventually went on to produce 13 tornados, which unfortunately led to one fatality.