Sunset Light on Awesome Clouds

Last Saturday evening we had amazing sunset light on clouds in the northeast.

The day started out clear as mixer trucks lined up before dawn to deliver concrete that would become the slab for a new house being built just across the street from our house.

(For more about pouring a slab, see my post of August, 2015, here.)


But by afternoon, the "monsoon season" clouds had rolled in, bringing scattered showers and lots of virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground).

Toward sunset, the sun finally fell below the cloud deck and shone through a gap between clouds and horizon, casting dramatic light on the Sandia Mountains, and on plants on the ground.  

And there was an interesting array of clouds to the northeast:

As the sun dropped lower, it began to illuminate the underside of the cloud deck.  The lowest hanging clouds began to light up, and a bit of a rainbow appeared:

7:21 pm MT

As the sun fell, more light shone on the clouds:

7:22 pm MT

7:23 pm MT

7:24 pm MT

7:27 pm MT

Here's a wide-angle panorama of the entire eastern sky from northeast to southeast:

7:29 pm MT

Finally, as the sun dropped below the horizon, the clouds caught fire:

7:35 pm MT

In the west, the sunset was pretty good too:

7:40 pm MT

Here's some detail from the sunset image above:

7:41 pm MT

And back in the northeast, the show was over:

7:42 pm MT

Total time:  about 20 minutes.


If you would like to see these and additional images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.


Enjoy!