Got a call from my parents they were seeing light pillars on the east side of town, so I headed out to check things out. I didn't figure it was cold enough out, but obviously it was. Thought it was 20F but was probably more like 15F, with fog trying to form near the river. The Cargil corn milling plant creates these when conditions are just right. Which isn't terribly often. I often swear things are ideal, yet no pillars. Trickiest part is simply getting it real cold WITH southeast or east winds to blow the steam towards town/lights. Most often it's going across the river or south towards the power plant. And it also seems when it is northerly it is drier and there's no diamond dust happening. It's just odd most of the time. This wasn't all that different either, as I couldn't figure out how the crystals were even this far west. Steam seemed directed to the northeast or north at best and this was located to the nw a bit. Get too far into the steam and it was a bit too foggy with the stuff.

It was actually a bit of a nightmare as I arrived and couldn't find the tripod mount to attach to the camera. I realized it must be back at home attached to the video camera. Was going through the car and camera bag madly as this was happening outside. All while knowing damn good and well how fickle and short-lived this stuff often is. I finally just grabbed the window clamp and got some shots that way. It was amazing as I'd seen pillars a few times now, but never doing the V shapes on top. Those V shapes came and went very rapidly. One second you'd have the above scene and in less than probably 30 seconds you might have zero pillars at all. It would come and go though, depending on the diamond dust filtering through, diamond dust which I wasn't understanding how it was getting to this location from the plant.

The above was taken from the same location as the first few, but looking east instead of west. All the steam and fog was easily seen going ne. The plant is just se of me. It was just odd as nothing seemed to be saying there would be crystals where I was. I think at first there must have been zero wind and the plumes spread out above. Then slowly the wind increased from the sw like it was supposed to and allowed this area to be on the edge at least for a bit.

Looking east from down on the flats more, now some pillars having stacked V's at times.

Pretty cool. If only it had lasted longer. Shortly there will be zero pillars anywhere, which drove me batty trying to understand what key ingredient changed. Was it the plant output, I've seen that before. The one bigger stack slows as if it has been turned off...and wala like a switch turned off on the pillars. Or was it the wind. Any increase in wind will kill fog, so that could have been it. Wind increase also bumps up temps, which indeed happened as the night went...but this happened rapidly as in a couple minutes from this to nothing anywhere...but still steam. So many things in there are producing steam that if the big stack is turned off, it's not easily noticed. I'm more and more sure that biggest stack is at least very important.

Looking north from the flats north of the plant. In very short order there wasn't a single pillar to be seen in any of the steam and fog.

February 2, 2011 22 degree halo, upper tangent arc and supralateral arc   Here are a couple of optics from February 2nd. I about gave up on this day when I noticed the upper tangent arc showing as I went home. Then I noticed what I figured would be the CZA up high but saw it was curving the wrong direction. Probably the best supralateral arc I've gotten. Which is saying very little as it's only the 2nd time I've seen it.

That isn't a lens artifact like my 10-22 will do sometimes. For one I saw it with my eyes and also I'm blocking out the sun for the most part, which really cuts back on that circular flare. I don't think it is a 46 degree halo as you can see all the colors and 46 degree is so very rare.

That is the supralateral up there again and not a lens flare. Slowly realizing if I want to see great optics displays here I need to make a "snow gun". Get some crazy stuff like Marko Riikonen and company track down.