Posted on 12/17/2022 11:32:37 AM PST by thecodont
Noctilucent clouds — the rarest clouds in the world — glowed like shimmering cobwebs in the sky over the San Francisco Bay Area early Friday morning, and experts think they were likely the result of a rocket launch. Skywatchers across the region were delighted by the otherworldly spectacle overhead and shared images on social media. One Twitter user posted a photo taken in the Sunset District at 6:30 a.m. "Pretty crazy looking," the tweet read.
Scientists chimed in with excitement. "Great shot of what appears to be a noctilucent cloud over the SF Bay Area this morning!" UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain posted in response to one photo. "Such clouds are very rare at this latitude and also in winter, and are the Earth's highest and driest clouds, forming in the mesosphere about 50 miles (!) up."
The National Weather Service confirmed Bay Area residents were indeed looking at noctilucent clouds just before sunrise, and the the clouds' occurrence is highly unusual. The clouds are most prevalent in the polar regions at the North and South Poles. When they do appear on the West Coast, which isn't often, they more commonly form in the Pacific Northwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Sorry I didn’t get up to see these!
Previous posts on these rare and lovely clouds:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3756168/posts
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3756168/posts
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3619526/posts
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3262877/posts
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2664879/posts
Courtesy of Rain Hayes
I thought the rarest clouds were mushroom clouds?
Remnants of the O3b mPOWER SpaceX Falcon launch from Vandenberg. Remarkable how quickly the US is building global satlink redundancy, many thanks to Trump’s creation of the United States Space Force.
OMG it turned into Corellia
Our friends reported an earthquake in El Cerrito early this morning, too.
experts think they were likely the result of a rocket launch
Space Force ... a big part of Trump’s legacy that Gropin’ Joe hasn’t wrecked.
well it does have an impressive uniformity to it!!
Yes, noctilucent clouds. This is the time of year for them IIRC.
Well California is caught in the spiders web.
Did these presage the little quake that was report for the Bay on the 17th?
Here ya go
More likely methane gas from all the people deficating on the streets.
The visuals are exactly what you would see with a twilight phenomenon launch.
Those clouds appear over swamps and open sewers that emit fecal coliforms into the atmosphere. Quite telling.
I guess it’s cool because it’s there, I guess?
See these all the time in Fairbanks.
Probably from all the filth and corruption and crap in the streets
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