Winter sunset on the Salish Sea
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The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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mid-January — mid-February 2022
Pacific Northwest
Some seasons are better for sunsets than others where I live in the Pacific Northwest. Late winter is one of those seasons. The atmosphere gets unstable, which stirs up layers of different kinds of clouds.
The thing is, there’s really no way to predict a colorful sunset. Cloud conditions that look the same to me can either turn spectacular or just gradually darken into night. We live mostly in the trees, which are fairly dense to the south and west. The only way we have a hint of a colorful sunset is by a few glowing pixels through the branches. To get a Big Sky view, we have to drive a few minutes around to a west-facing beach a half mile away.
Sometimes I know it’ll be gone by then, so I just enjoy it from my house, like this one.
January 12
Other days we’re more on the ball and make it out before the color has faded. Once we were on the ferry. That’s a bonus to coming home.
All these sunsets were in a recent interval, mid January to mid February: I count 7 of them we caught (multiple views of some, looking NW, due W, or SW), not bad for a month of days.
Except for the one from the house and the ferry sunset, all photos are from one particular west-facing beach. In chronological order:
🌏
Jan 22
🐚
Jan 22
🌏
Jan 28
🐚
Jan 28
🐚
Jan 28
🌏
Jan 31 (on the ferry)
🌏
Feb 13
🐚
Feb 13
🐚
Feb 13
🌏
Feb 15
🐚
Feb 15
🐚
Feb 15
🌏
Feb 18
🐚
Feb 18
🌏
The pretty sunsets were some compensation for the unusually dry weather we had in late winter, although unstable skies are accompanied by rainy weather as often as not. Things have dampened now thankfully. It’s been raining for a couple of days, under solid grey skies horizon to horizon. I’m grateful for the soaking before late spring — summer drought season begins. It helps my rainwater catchment tanks too. Currently it’s raining lightly with a light SE wind.
WHAT’S UP IN NATURE IN YOUR AREA TODAY?
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