It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s, It’s

Posted by The Snowman on February 28, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized.

It’s most likely the Golden Snowman finally losing his mind. I just got back from grabbing some groceries and on the way home I noticed a bunch of white trails in the sky going vertically and horizontally and NO they weren’t clouds but looked bright white. Anyone have any ideas as to what it is? Whatever it is it’s still going on and if you look out you might be able to see what I’m talking about. I’m just curious if anything scientific is going on tonight like a comet, shooting stars, a satellite falling down or something? Hopefully it’s not that satellite we shot down a week or so ago deciding to make re-entry in CNY. Yeah I know I’m just losing it. I’ll try downloading some pictures I took but most likely all that we will see will be black like most of my pictures come out. Update – I just downloaded the pictures and they did come out black as I thought they would. Below are the original pictures along with a Dell image expert quick edit which just brightened them up. Nothing else was altered.

This first set of pictures I was shooting almost straight over head at the sky and the beam was going horizontally and pretty much just stationary. Just click the pictures to enlarge them.

Original Picture

Brightened Up

The next 3 sets of pictures are all shot pretty much in the same direction and this set of pictures really shows the vertical rays or whatever it is.

Original

Brightened

This set of pictures is pretty much the same location as the one below but not taking the picture as high in the sky as the one below.

Original

Brightened Up

This set of pictures you can barely see the rays or what ever coming down with clouds in the background.

Original

Brightened

I just thought it was a pretty cool sight to see and I am really curious as to what they were. They were in all different directions and distances. Any scientists visit here???

OK back to the snow race. The stats are up to date and it looks like the beard stays. Syracuse barely received the 9 inches that I mentioned in a previous post so the beard stays for now and I don’t have to hang out in a closet until Spring comes. Syracuse, Rochester and Albany are back over their average snowfall for this time in the snow season and Binghamton is pretty close. Buffalo still has some catching up to do but snow is still in the forecast so lets hope it happens. The contest is still close and up for grabs.

Binghamton can sleep better tonight because NOAA caught their mistake and have the stats back on track just like I knew they would. When you think of all the stats they keep for the thousands of cities I think they do an awesome job. Have a great day and night all.

9 comments on “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s, It’s”

  2. “You saw city lights reflecting ice crystals from up above. Usually these are flat crystals that are able to focus the light in pillar shape. They are most common on very cold mornings when there’s moisture present trapped under inversions. Usually it’s only cold enough for super cooled ice droplets, but when there’s ice nuclei present to form a snowflakes, Viola!”

    Obvioulsy! I was going to say that.

    Kidding. I have only seen them once, in Lake George. Very cool you got to see them!

  3. What you saw are light pillars! These features work in similar fashion to sun pillars we’d see during mornings of very light lake effect snow.

    You saw city lights reflecting ice crystals from up above. Usually these are flat crystals that are able to focus the light in pillar shape. They are most common on very cold mornings when there’s moisture present trapped under inversions. Usually it’s only cold enough for super cooled ice droplets, but when there’s ice nuclei present to form a snowflakes, Viola!

  5. Very cool pat! for it not being a totally rare happening, I’ve never seen the northern lights myself either. Had to be rather cool to see! Nice pics!

    Not much weather wise. Clipper comming through Friday night, probably 1-3 inches for all the cities. March 1st tomorrow… the snow days are sure numbered… I think Buffalo is gonna be throwing in the towel Saturday… 🙁

  7. Robert, thank you for taking the time to post.

    I always thought that the Aurora Borealis was more of a North Pole thing or in Alaska but after you posted about I just looked around and it was definitely similar to some of the pictures I just saw except for the colors. They were more of a bright white from where I was seeing them from. That said what I saw were very similar to the pictures at this site

    http://photos.timblanco.com/timsbest/northernlights/2004-11-08/

    It will be interesting to see if anything is around the news sites as to other people seeing the same as I did. Thanks again!

    Mike, I won’t even go to spot on as often as I have missed this season, lol

    I could guesstimate my name and most likely I would be way off 🙂

  8. The photo images of the strange light look like the Aurora Borealis.

    Thanks for all the Golden Snowball work. It is a lot of fun.

  9. few…thank god they caught it…i almost couldnt go to sleep tonight lol. Albany looks to be the bigger winner by the time we hit saturday morning, but probably not by much. id expect buffalo to get 4.0 inches, rochester 3.0 inches, syracuse 4.0 inches, binghamton 3.5 inches, and albany 5.5 inches. take those with a grain of salt, as you can see how “spot” on ive been so far this winter…predicting snow amounts is really hard 🙁 lol

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