Weather Update, Site News Last updated: 13 July 2011

It has been almost two weeks since my last session in the observatory on 1 July. The weather here has seen frequent monsoon clouds and storms. I thought I would give a brief weather update.

Saturday, 2 July, dawned cloudy. Monsoon clouds most of the day, with strong winds creating a dusty sky. Sunday, 3 July, clouds. My live webcam captured the crescent moon through a hole in the clouds:

Monday, 4 July, was a cloudy day with monsoon thunderstorms in the area. Lots of thunder and lightning but only a little rain. My live webcam did capture a nice "gust front"; click the link to view the time-lapse video. The local electric utility company turned off the electricity for 85 minutes beginning about sunset due to a storm in the area. That is a regular occurrence with them. Tuesday, 5 July, and another stormy afternoon and evening, as seen on the time-lapse video. The evening storm provided some much needed rain (0.3"). Wednesday, 6 July, was mostly a hazy day, with some clouds in the eastern half of the sky. As sunset approached, a monsoon storm approached from the east. It had some nice mammatus clouds showing a few minutes after sunset:

And the crescent moon appeared briefly through a small hole in the clouds:

Thursday, 7 July, clouds continued but there was very little storm activity at my location. That changed as sunset approached. This nice double rainbow appeared as a storm approached from the east:

Then we had a period of very heavy rainfall. See the time-lapse video. Friday, 8 July, had clouds, but no storms here. Saturday, 9 July, cloudy, with light brief rain a couple of times. Then late in the afternoon, heavy rains came. Check out the time-lapse video, along with a bonus lightning video. Here's a still from the lightning video:

I checked the POD after the storm passed and there were no leaks (none had been expected). So far in July, we have received 1" of rain. Sunday, 10 July, more clouds and storms. See the time-lapse video. Here are two photos showing the growth of one monsoon storm system in about an hour:

Monday, 11 July, still cloudy, with some light rain mid-day. See the time-lapse video. Tuesday, 12 July, cloudy. Wednesday, 13 July, dawned cloudy, but cleared in the morning. As I write this, the skies are clear and the forecasts are clear for the first half of the night. We'll see if the forecasts are accurate.

In Site news, I have now completed moving all of the Cassiopeia Observatory web site files that were on Apple's server to weasner.com server. If you find any broken links or missing images, please let me know. Thanks! I still have many other sites to move from Apple to weasner.com. Lots of work to do, compounded by the slow DSL connection here.

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