News•August 29, 2014
Picture This: Awesome Auroras and Triple Rainbows
The skies were awash in color this week, it seems, with auroras dancing across the night skies in the north, a bright triple rainbow appearing in Alaska and the sunset-hued glow of rain over one of the nation's natural jewels, Yosemite National Park. We've rounded up these riotous displays, along with a few more of our favorite weather and climate photos from the past week.
Awesome Auroras
The night skies over Canada and the upper reaches of the Lower 48 lit up this week with a kaleidoscopic auroral display.
A solar flare unleashed by the sun created the mesmerizing dance of light. Charged particles rocketed toward Earth by the flare are funneled by the planet’s magnetosphere toward the poles. When the solar particles collide with particles in Earth’s atmosphere, light of different colors (or wavelengths) is emitted in the shifting sheets that make up the auroras.
Spectacular auroras graced the skies over Wisconsin on Aug. 28, 2014.
Credit: Justin Phillips
The aurora as seen from the International Space Station. Credit: Reid Wiseman
Clouds and Canyon
The majesty of the Grand Canyon is always a jaw-dropping sight, but the otherworldly beauty of the jagged gash with its rust-colored rocks was set off nicely by the contrastingly soft edges of mammatus clouds lying overhead.
The bulbous lobes that are the defining characteristic of mammatus clouds form on the underside of a thunderstorm’s anvil cloud and can signal that the worst of a storm is over. According to the University of Illinois’ WW2010 site, updrafts in the storm carry air enriched by precipitation, eventually losing steam and spreading out horizontally under the anvil cloud.
The saturated air is heavier than the air around it and so begins to sink back down, its temperature increasing as it does so. The warming causes the precipitation in the air to evaporate. But if the sinking doesn’t produce enough warming to evaporate all the precipitation, the air stays cooler than its surroundings and continues sinking. Eventually the sinking air forms the rounded pouches below the main cloud.
Wow wow wow! My best friend just sent me this photo of mammatas clouds over the Grand Canyon! #ItsAmazingOutTherepic.twitter.com/wismxZxuey
— Kathryn Prociv (@KathrynProciv) August 25, 2014
Glowing Yosemite
Not to be outdone by its fellow national park, Yosemite has its own spectacular weather photo this week.
This one, taken by filmmaker and photographer Michael Shainblum, shows rain and clouds glowing an eye-popping orange thanks to the reddening rays of the setting sun. Gorgeous.
glowing rain during #sunset at #GlacierPoint in #Yosemite. @YosemiteNPS@NPCA@NatlParkService@VisitCApic.twitter.com/3X7rKsqECq
— Michael Shainblum (@shainblum) August 24, 2014
Marie’s Super Swells
SoCal surfers were stoked this week when Hurricane Marie sent some gnarly waves ashore.
While the strength of the storm dwindled as the week went on, its peak Category 5 strength on Sunday meant it pushed significant swells in front of it. The swells reached the SoCal coast by Tuesday afternoon, sending surf-worthy waves — some of which reached heights of 20 feet — crashing ashore and surfers flocking to them.
But not all was fun and games. The storm also created dangerous rip currents and caused flooding along some parts of the coast. More than 250 people had to be rescued by lifeguards, according to CBS Los Angeles, and one surfer died at the hospital after being rescued.
Huge waves challenge Southern California surfers, lifeguards with several rescues already http://t.co/zFUgO6imYVpic.twitter.com/DFONWSojPh
— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) August 27, 2014
�� RT @KTLA: Surfer is launched into the air in Newport Beach, where waves are reaching 25 ft http://t.co/Yc4e5vocYCpic.twitter.com/VLggCKwJG2
— Kathryn Prociv (@KathrynProciv) August 27, 2014
Not Single, Or Double, But Triple Rainbow
Move over measly double rainbow, and make room for the even more amazing triple rainbow.
The photo of the multicolored stripes shooting across the sky were captured by Jennifer Dufresne over the Palmer Hay Flats to the north of Anchorage, Alaska.
Triple rainbows are actually formed in the same way as double and single rainbows. Rainbows often form after a storm, when the sun's rays are refracted and reflected by raindrops. If the angles are right, the light can reflect off the back of the raindrop multiple times, forming more than one rainbow, with the secondary and tertiary rainbows showing up more faintly than the main one.
You don't see this everyday: TRIPLE rainbow! What does it mean? It means light was bent and bounced many times #AKwxpic.twitter.com/ErUFeF0Dx8
— NWS Anchorage (@NWSAnchorage) August 26, 2014