That Saskatchewan Living Sky Again

FTLComm - Tisdale - December 10, 1998

Above is an untouched picture of Wednesday afternoon's sunset. This fabulous end to a great day was seen all across the Northern plains. The snow depth is now making for excellent cross country skiing in La Ronge and skiers there reported that the sunset was totally awe inspiring. To create a spectacle like this you need clouds aloft so that the setting sun will reflect off their base so it is reasonable to assume that these clouds must be very high indeed to create such a widespread phenomena. At 1:10AM I tried to capture another truly marvelous sky scape but alas the light range exceeded the little digital camera's capabilities. Had I been using a film camera on a tripod and a minute long exposure I might have been able to record the waves. Some days ago I reported here in Ensign the phenomena weather briefers like to refer to as waves simply because that is what they look like on a weather map and alas at 1:10 this morning that is what could be seen in the sky. A series of bands of cloud being pushed along by a South Westerly flow of mild air very high above the earth's surface which in turn will bring us some pretty warm temperatures today, tomorrow and into the weekend. As I mentioned I could not get the scene so I have taken the liberty of adding the bands so that you who may not have seen this great skyscape might get some idea of what it was like. Only the bands were added to the image, the light in the sky is as it was, the moon half hidden by cloud and the street lights below.