Picture: Waves of land and sky; fog rolling over the Berkeley Hills as seen from a ridge in Briones Regional Park, Contra Costa County, California (Click the image to see it larger.)
Last week I made a post about how I deliberately chose to not take a photo, even though I had all of my camera gear with me, so I could enjoy the perfection of the moment. Well… that was last week.
On Friday, I was again out hiking with all of my gear, doing an extended 11 mile loop. As I crested a ridge, I saw something I can’t recall having seen before. In all the years of seeing fog pour in over the Berkeley Hills, this was the first time I remember seeing the fog make a very distinct rolling wave pattern. Normally the fog and rolls straight in from the coast, forcing the fog up and over the hills. In this case, while the fog was streaming eastward, an approaching weather system was dropping down out of the north, pushing winds to the south, parallel with the Berkeley Hills. So instead of pouring down the east side valleys and ridges, the ridges were forcing the winds back up toward the sky instead of down into the valley.
For those that know the area, Vollmer peak is directly under the “waves”.
Excellent catch Gary, and your description is exactly what happened! I’ve seen it in Marin but not here. Sept. and Oct. are the best times of the year for this.
Patrick
Yo Gary: I’m hoping that my help with captioning will help to pay down some of my beer debt 🙂
I believe you photographed “Kelvin–Helmholtz instability”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin%E2%80%93Helmholtz_instability
Fine image, Gary!
Yes, it is almost like that, but the hills themselves are causing the vortices instead of a straight boundary between two layers!
Cheers,
Patrick
Born and raised in foggy CA coastal hills, I can’t recall ever seeing a scene like this. Fascinating.
This is a gorgeous scene, and I really love the crop you chose. Gorgeous, Gary!