Colorful virga!

After a wonderfully relaxing weekend, full of cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning... I was surprised with a lovely sky-treat. As I went outside to sit and watch Mini-Dew at her bus stop, I looked up to see a dynamic and heavily textured sky. It was gorgeous with the rough underbelly of an altocumulus stratiformis blanket, but then, as the sun rose into it, it came alive with an amazing pink flair. If that had been all, it would have been enough, but that was far from all. As I looked up to take in the beautiful palette of color, I was struck by something I haven't quite seen in that light... falling from the clouds in my northeastern sky, were sheets of virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground), and it too was awash with the splash of pink, salmon, coral, orange, gold. It was brilliant... so you ]know me, I rushed back inside to grab the camera. :DAlmost like my own little Aurora Borealis show... except NOT! One of these days... probably when I'm old and allowing myself to grey.

Well, Tropical Storm Danny was the less than exciting story on Friday. We became slightly more interesting factor when he merged with an extratropical low pressure system off the coast of the Carolinas. Really, I think meteorologists will argue about whether or not Danny should have ever earned his title. No more reports are coming out about him, but another area, which looks slightly better is given a high chance of development. Stay tuned for ongoing coverage of the birth of Erika.

Have a stupendous day!!!
~Dewdrop

A little virga

OK, so this morning, there were 1.3 million still without power, a large percentage of those in Kentucky, where they have a record number of power outages as a result of this winter ice storm. The temperatures here in south Georgia today are dropping. The high yesterday and today only got to the mid-50's and we are headed back down to freezing. Yuck.

I was treated this morning, though, to some heavily sheared virga.

In meteorology, VIRGA is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground. It is also common in the Southern United States during summer (it's obviously confused.)

Virga can produce dramatic and beautiful scenes, especially during a red sunset. The red light can be caught by the streamers of falling precipitation, and winds may push the bottom ends of the virga so it falls at an angle, making the clouds appear to have commas attached. (Exactly!)

The word virga is derived from Latin meaning twig or branch. ~Wikipedia

It wasn't my first time seeing virga, but it was my first time photographing it. There was so much of it this morning, several of the clouds along the way to work were producing virga, so it was neat.

Yesterday, I had a beautiful little cirrocumulus/altocumulus/contrail display over my water tower. You know me...I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
~Dewdrop