We had a day without rain! It was so sparkly bright everywhere. We
didn't have to turn the lights on in the house all day, even after the
sun had set. This is our first winter in the new house, and on Saturday
we could see how much light still comes in through the west-facing
windows at twilight. We've gotten almost twice the amount of average
rainfall for the month of December here, more than 14 inches of rain.
It's been great for replenishing our drought-devastated forests, rivers,
creeks, and reservoirs, but for a sunlight atmospheric optic lover like
me, it's been bleak bleak bleak.
But then the sun came
out on Saturday. There were a few scattered clouds here and there,
enough to make things very interesting. I was on the phone with my mom
for our daily 4:00 pm chat, when I looked up and saw this. I kept
holding the phone and talking and clicked away with one hand.
Oh
yes, I had definitely missed seeing these beautiful iridescent colors.
They were so lovely after so much gray darkness for so long. I have no
idea why the blue sky looks so "not blue" in the first three photos, but
that's what the camera "saw." The blue in the last photo is much more
what the sky looked like. Ah well, I think you can get the splendidness
of the moment anyway.
Then, of course, night did fall. We didn't get to see the full moon on Christmas, but on the day after we saw this.
The
moon rose in a sea of incoming clouds, creating halos of rings in red,
blues, and greens. The night air was cold, almost freezing, but I stood
out there anyway, delighted by the light.
It was a perfect day without rain.