St. Paddy’s Day Explosion @ Alameda Harbor

So many people resent Daylight Saving Time, but I must confess – I love it. My timeframe shifts for more convenient sunrises and sunsets. As a teacher I also notice how much easier it makes the coming and going to and from school for students – a bit brighter on either end of the seasons. I hurry home on St. Patrick’s Day, this year on a Friday, takeout Italian pasta (butternut Squash ravioli – our favorite) from Trabocco at Southshore on Alameda. I wait for Greg and sit on the stern watching the clouds gather for the sunset show. I notice recently that there is no coloring of clouds at sunset this past week. I wax romantic as Stephen Corfidi of NOAA explains the factors of twilight phenomena replete with magnificent charts and color photo sequences. It turns out that the low-lying clouds this week lack color due to formation, boundary layer, and pollution factors. What they don’t lack is superb pattern formation. I am mesmerized by this slow-motion burst of fibrous stratocumulus clouds. They expand in a V-formation explosion across the harbor. Sun burns straight through them – no reflective color, but oh! That exquisite pattern of fine-fingered white against cerulean blue sky is more than enough for tonight’s show. My Dolby cinema group husband would be pleased to know that, “clouds catch the last red-orange rays of the setting sun and the first light of the dawn like a theatre screen, and reflect this light to the ground.” Grand show this evening, even as the theatre of our harbor lacks the color to impress, but rocks the pattern design category.