Our first storms off the northern Pacific have begun rumbling around Point Arguello and Point Conception, barreling through the Santa Barbara Channel, squeezing against the south-facing slopes of the Santa Ynez Range and delivering their precious cargo of rain.
We need plenty of rain.
I don’t want to seem like I want it all. Our local lake levels are mostly holding up pretty well, so I’m okay with potent slugs of rain making it across the desert and bringing Lake Mead back up to working capacity for all the people who depend upon it for water and electricity.
It’s great when this time of year comes around and we have big-sky cloud formations to enjoy, ponder, study and maybe hide from. This is exciting fun.
There are the standard cloud types which as a sea captain I have studied including cumulonimbus, nimbostratus, cirrus and many others.
Those are classic because you can do an AI engine search, print out a page, go outside and compare to what is up in the sky.
On some days you’ll see a variety of formations. Some can help you understand what is coming next, like rain or another type of cloud formation which typically follows the first one you observed.
Even more exciting are cloud formations that mean something big is happening locally and perhaps imminently. For example, we have our local cloud cap over the mountains behind Goleta and Santa Barbara that seafaring people call the “fingers of death.”
We know from experience at sea that those particular cloud formations develop when there are strong northwest winds in the western part of the Santa Barbara Channel.
So the fingers of death serve as an important warning of what parts of the ocean we should steer clear of.
I recall being far out at sea watching stratus clouds swirl, bulge, twist and form a 5-mile-long horizontal twister on the underside of the stratus deck directly above us.
I bellowed at everyone aboard to hang on while I turned the boat and max throttled up to as fast as those 500 horses on the back of my boat would go, before that horizontal twister detached, dropped one end, and became a dangerous waterspout.
Wedge shapes of dark water-filled clouds look ominous and towering thunderheads with their anvil-shaped tops can pack a serious wallop.
Out on the water, we blast away from those pretty quickly because when the lightning starts flying, those of us on boats naturally think, “Yup, we are definitely the tallest thing around out here.”
It’s not a comforting feeling, especially when you can feel electric energy in the air around you.
Cloud watching is fun and informative, and I’m glad the cloud season is finally here. Let’s hope for lots and lots of clouds (and wet ones) this season.
I’ve got a question for you. Got any ideas on how to dress up as El Niño for Halloween? Please put your thinking caps on because I want to see some artistic expressions coming to the front door.
