Nighttime Weather Cams: The Next Frontier

One of the great sources of weather information are video cams that view the sky, particularly since a number of them are now available in high-def and in near real time.    One of my favorites is the space needle pano cam, shown below, which gives you a 360 degree view of the skies of Seattle.  And there are thousands more "weather" cams around the U.S.

http://ift.tt/2dCuLuZ

Virtually all of these cams are daytime affairs...and clearly there is plenty of weather going on at night--as well as lots of stars, meteors, auroras, and other interesting visual elements.

With cameras and video increasingly offering low-light capabilities, why stop with daytime weather cams?   You don't have to...and someone is exploring this fascinating new dimension:  Greg Johnson of Washington's SkunkBay Weather.

Greg Johnson is our local poet-laureate/visual artist of weather cam videos and offers a website in which you can view triple-cam views of the sky from his home on the Kitsap Peninsula.   Some of his weather videos, coordinated with new age music, are moving on an emotional level.  Recently, he started producing night cam videos and the results are amazing.  Let me show you a few.

Here is one in which you can see stars (the big dipper!), clouds, aircraft, and a few meteors (click link):

http://ift.tt/2hbk7f5

Or one during the supermoon, a few weeks ago:

Super Moon - November 2016 from SkunkBayWeather on Vimeo.

Or a moonlit night in October:

Moon Lit Clouds and a Meteor - October 18, 2016 from SkunkBayWeather on Vimeo.

I think you will agree that such nighttime sky videos have a lot of promise and I look forward to the results of Greg's exploration of their potential.   With music, of course.

from Cliff Mass Weather Blog http://ift.tt/2hbpUkE