A break in the June Gloom

Clouds are not a curiosity in Southern California. We have low clouds all the time. In fact, we are in our season of what we call May Gray, proceeding now into what we call June Gloom. We sit next to the Pacific Ocean, and it interacts with the atmosphere this time of year to create a "marine layer" which is a deck of fog-level clouds that sit over us from dawn to midday and sometimes longer.

But rarely, like today, we get a distant weather feature called an offshore low, that can bring us clouds like these. Today's low was sitting off the coast, 600 miles west of San Francisco, with no jet stream to guide it anywhere. Rotating around this low were bands of moisture and instability that actually brought rain, wind, thunder and lightning to parts of Southern California today. The local news opened with a five-minute story on this weather. We saw none at our house, however. I have a long reputation as a reverse Joe Btfsplk, the Li'l Abner character who always had a storm cloud over his head. Wherever I travel, even in summer in Tornado Alley, and how much I hope for stormy weather, clear skies always follow me.


But these clouds were fine. After general clouds all day, these thoroughbreds showed up about 5 p.m. They were gorgeous.


And a few seconds after I snapped this last image, I felt a drop of rain on my left forearm. Only one.