This is Part 2 of my lenticular cloud chase this day. Part One is here. From the Lone Pine area in Owens Valley, I motored south and east in order to near relatively new wave cloud development. The new formations seemed to be in and around the Panamint Mountains, to the east-southeast, and south of there. There were also some spaceship-shaped lenticulars to my south, around Ridgecrest. I decided to head south on 395 from Olancha instead of taking 190 to the east. I felt that getting south as fast as I could would be better, and if I needed to get to Trona, then it would be quicker by going south to Inyokern and then east through Ridgecrest.
By the time I reached Ridgecrest, any nearby lenticulars were small and the wave cloud activity was demising quite a bit. There were, however, some nice ones well to the east. These would have been over the southern Death Valley region, an impossible area to reach before dark. I continued to Trona, and took the road towards the Pinnacle. If nothing else, it was looking like there would be a pretty sunset, with the scattered high clouds around.
The “magic hour” around sunset was exactly that! The lenticulars to the east lit up nicely in orange and red. A thick plume of dust rose up off of Searles Lake to the north, on the east side of Trona. The sunset over the Pinnacles was a fiery one, and the clouds and stars at dusk made for some eerie scenes.
VickiB says
Hi Bill,
As you can see, I registered with the Stormbruiser site, and am enjoying reading your accounts of not only storm chasing, but cloud chasing. The sunset shots are breathtaking, and now I am thinking of buying not only the Wray, CO tornado shot and the lightning shot, but the sunset as well. Since there are 64 pages, I will have to read a little at a time.
Vicki