Twelve Clouds over Los Angeles

and suddenly, Southern California had weather

Cloud One

4 May 2023, 4:05 pm Pacific Time • 40mm, 1/2000 @f8, ISO 100

In Los Angeles there are two kinds of skies:

• Normal, 350-or so day a year, blank skies

• Overcast, either because this is the one day of the month it’s actually raining, or because it’s “June Gloom” and will blow off sometime before noon

What we don’t see in LA is clouds in the sky. Something about the LA Basin? Smog? Pollution? IDK. This isn’t a city where we see clouds very often. At least not in the last handful of decades.

With the endless parade of “Atmospheric Rivers” from late February to early April, and definitely including nearly every day of March, we experienced that rarest of things, clouds in the sky.

I’ve been thinking about Clouds ever since I read Annie Dillard’s book For the Time Being. It was nice to finally have some in the sky to ponder.

Here are twelve of the clouds I’ve noticed.

Cloud Two

6 March 2023, 5:21 pm Pacific Time • 75mm, 1/500 @f5, ISO 100

Cloud Three

21 April 2021, 9:29 am Pacific Time • 14mm, 1/800 @f5.6, ISO 100

Cloud Four

3 March 2021, 6:15 am Pacific Time • 90mm, 1/125 @f8, ISO 160

Cloud Five

3 March 2021, 7:03 am Pacific Time • 90mm, 1/125 @f8, ISO 125

Cloud Six

5 December 2022, 10:34 am Pacific Time • 75mm, 1/1600 @f11, ISO 100

Cloud Seven

6 December 2022, 10:33 am Pacific Time • 75mm, 1/1250 @f13, ISO 100

Cloud Eight

29 March 2023, 12:31 pm Pacific Time • 90mm, 1/1600 @f8, ISO 100

Cloud Nine

26 April 2021, 8:23 am Pacific Time • 200mm, 1/2000 @f5.6, ISO 100

Cloud Ten

28 February 2023, 8:50 am Pacific Time • 135mm, 1/1250 @f11, ISO 100

Cloud Eleven

28 February 2023, 8:51 am Pacific Time • 135mm, 1/2000 @f11, ISO 100

Cloud Twelve

3 March 2021, 6:19 am Pacific Time • 90mm, 1/160 @f8, ISO 100