Pictures of The Light Pillars Show

I posted last night (see below) about some kind of weather phenomenon going on while I was out and about. Well after reading around and reading some comments left here by visitors it turns out that what I was seeing are called Light Pillars. It really was an awesome site and there are a few pictures on a couple of sites to show you what I mean. I took several pictures and as usual my night time pictures didn't come out. One of these days I will read the manual to my new camera. In the mean time check out the pictures at http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=247dfa80-5266-43ad-b5d7-2d3f5d1c8fdf and you will see how cool it looked. There is also a picture on Syracuse.com at http://blog.syracuse.com/news/2008/02/pillars_of_light_illuminate_sk.html I'll tell you one thing those photographers for the Post Standard have taken some great pictures over the years and being a photo buff I really love checking them out.

According to Sully light pillars are 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! Thanks Sully ;) Here is another picture I found and is pretty close to what I was seeing when driving home from Fayetteville last night;

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0209/pillars_tape_big.jpg You can read more about Light Pillars at http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/eyes/pillars.htm

TQ who is a forum member here at Golden Snowball has a contest going on right now which he does every time there is some snow in the forecast for the eastern coast cities. I ALWAYS keep intending to post them here when he has them and once again I missed it. For what ever reason I was thinking the deadline was for later tonight. Anyways here is the link to his site for you all to bookmark for any future contests that he has http://www.newx-forecasts.com Once again I'm sorry for missing the deadline TQ and just leave the info in the comments box nest time to be safe ;)

Weather wise it looks like snow is in the forecast for most if not all of the GSB cities but not a whole lot of it from what I have read. I'm not even going to try and predict how much because I along with a few others have been off quite a bit this year. Maybe if I say not much we will get a ton of snow. SO, not much snow coming our way but check with the pros (not us) to see whats coming our way.

I just check out the snow stats for Madison, Wisconsin and it looks like Syracuse is holding on to a narrow lead with Madison picking up another 1.5 inches of snow to stand at 89.3 for the season. Syracuse is at 94.4 so only about 5 inches separating the two cities. Right now Madison is a whopping 50 inches over their normal snowfall for this time of the year. Does anyone know of any other cities in the United States with a population over 100,000 that is close to Syracuse or above them? Have a Super Weekend All!