figmo: Baby Grace and Lynn (Default)
figmo ([personal profile] figmo) wrote2011-04-18 11:59 pm
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Why I love northern California

This was my view when I arrived home from work this evening:



That's not a blur on the photo; that's a double rainbow.

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 07:52 am (UTC)(link)
I probably see a double rainbow two or three times a year here in the UK. Not at the moment though, we seem to be rather short of rain for the last few weeks. They are saying that we might get a bit on Thursday, but this is the Met. Office who seem to not even get the current weather right* -- and Britain where the only thing one can predict with certainty is that "there will be weather of some kind".

A couple of times in my life I've seen a triple rainbow (two complete bands and another very faint band with only a couple of colours visible). I think it has to be very special circumstances, possibly involving a couple of bands of rain as well as dark cloud behind.

* On BBC radio, broadcasting from London, at the end of the news: "London and the South East will be dry and sunny all day." DJ: "That's strange, I just looked out of the window and it's pouring with rain!" Whatever they do on the roof of the Met. Office evidently doesn't involve actually noticing the weather...

[identity profile] figmo.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
At KLIV years ago they actually had a thermometer on-site so you could say what the actual temperature was at the station.

To find out what it is like outside, however, you sometimes have to get up out of the booth and walk around to where there's a window.

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Yup, when I was in the university station (UKC Radio on 300m, 998kHz in the middle of medium wave band, 1976 to 78) I used to go along to the end of the corridor (about 15ft), crack open the fire door and stick my nose outside, and come back and tell the DJ the current weather for those students who hadn't got out of bed yet. It got called "the nose forecast" -- but I was always more accurate than on any commercial station...

(I do miss university radio. It's all gone up-market now, with pro (or at least comercial) equipment instead of homebrew, slick jingles done in a pro studio (or on a Mac, no tape cutting), etc. I'd be out of place as a tech even, licences no longer allow you to fix your own stuff. But I'm actually finding something like it in the ham radio culture, but without the music.)

[identity profile] dd-b.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 02:55 pm (UTC)(link)
The Bay Area is a great place.

But we get better thunderstorms, and I suspect better rainbows, in Minnesota. (A place where, generally, the climate is NOT the good part; way too hot and humid in the summer, and cold and snowy in the winter of course.)

That particular one of yours is excellent, anyway!

[identity profile] figmo.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 04:01 pm (UTC)(link)
You can keep your thunderstorms; they creep me out.

[identity profile] dd-b.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 04:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm probably overly casual about them. They're among the more severe weather events, and of course spawn tornadoes sometimes, too.

But they're really cool! I love lightning.
howeird: (Default)

[personal profile] howeird 2011-04-19 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Tres cool. That followed me most of the way driving to Starbucks yesterday.
ext_12246: (melonhead)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 06:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Oooohhh!

[identity profile] ifics.livejournal.com 2011-04-20 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Double rainbows are not uncommon in Southern California.

[identity profile] figmo.livejournal.com 2011-04-20 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I never said I didn't also love Southern California, did I? :-)