WEATHER, FORCES OF NATURE, AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
characterized by good weather
fair, clear, pleasant, lovely, balmy, halcyon, temperate, springlike, summer-like, summery
characterized by bad weather
nasty, foul, inclement, wintery, winter-like, smoggy
sunny
bright, cloudless, glorious, sunshiny
intensely bright
glary, glaring, dazzling, blinding
cloudy
cloud-covered, nebulous, partly sunny
covered or blanketed with clouds
overcast, lowering, gray, gloomy, clouded up
foggy
misty, thick, murky, vaporous, brumous
permeated by a heavy haze of fog mixed with smoke and atmospheric chemical pollutants
smoggy
windy
breezy, gusty, blowing, blowy, howling, roaring, turbulent, blustery, zephyrous
stormy
tempestuous, raging, angry, dirty
threatening
lowering, darkening, looming, black
damp
humid, muggy, dank, steamy, moist
rainy or wet
precipitating, drizzly, drippy, torrential, showering, pouring
dewy
roric, roriferous
wet and cold
raw, bleak
wet and messy underfoot
slushy, sloppy
dry
arid, parched, desiccated, bone-dry, waterless
very warm
hot, torrid, burning, blazing, scorching, blistering, broiling, baking, searing, roasting, tropical, pitiless
hot and humid
sultry, steamy, sweltering, stifling
cool
chill, chilly
refreshingly cool or chill
crisp, bracing, brisk, autumnal, fall-like
cold
chilly, nippy, sharp, algid
very cold
biting, piercing, bone-chilling, freezing, numbing
snowing
snowy, niveous, nival
frosty
rimy, hoary
icy or frozen
frigid, freezing, gelid
multi-colored (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) arc of light (on the side of the sky opposite to the sun—the higher the sun, the lower the arc) produced when sunlight is reflected inside raindrops
rainbow
visibly dense mass or stratum of fog seen from a distance formed above the sea
fog bank
rainbow-like arc of diffracted white light sometimes visible in fog
fogbow, fogdog, fogeater, seadog
hazy glow of light sometimes visible just before dawn or just after sunset
zodiacal light
visible coronal (electrical) discharge, during a thunderstorm, seen on a pointed object, such as part of the tip of a tree, the wing of a plane, or the mast of a ship
St. Elmo’s fire, St. Elmo’s light, corposant
transitional zone between two air masses differing in temperature or density
front
edge of a warm air mass that is advancing
warm front
rising current of warm air (used by birds, balloonists, and glider pilots to gain altitude)
thermal
brief spell of briskly cold weather
cold snap
edge of a cold air mass that is advancing
cold front
mixed front occurring when a cold front overtakes a warm front and lifts the warm air
occluded front
transitional zone between two differing air masses, neither of which is forceful enough to replace the other
stationary front
elongated area having low barometric pressure
trough
ocean low-pressure area near the equator having characteristic calms, light winds, and squalls
doldrums
two regions or belts, at about 30° North and 30° South, known for having high pressure, calms, and baffling winds
horse latitudes
predominant, continual wind of the tropics and subtropics blowing toward the equator from the northeast (between the doldrums and the northern horse latitudes) or the southeast (between the doldrums and the southern horse latitudes)
trade wind, trade
narrow band of high-speed winds 10 to 15 miles (the upper atmosphere) above the earth from a generally westerly direction
jet stream
marked shift in wind speed and direction over a short area
wind shear
rising current of air
anabatic wind
downward-flowing current of air
katabatic wind
lying on or coming from the other side of a mountain range
tramontane
brief, violent downdraft over a small area
microburst, downburst
strong wind
gale
brief, violent windstorm, often bringing rain or snow
squall
storm of wind-borne clouds of sand, as in a desert
sandstorm
wall of dust resulting from a microburst
haboob
cold and dry northerly wind of southern France
mistral
hot, dry, dust-laden wind from the deserts of Libya that reaches the northern Mediterranean coast
sirocco, scirocco
moist, warm wind in the coastal Pacific Northwest from the southwest; also, a warm dry wind blowing down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
Chinook
warm, dry, dusty wind along the west coast of Africa in some seasons
harmattan
warm, dry wind coming off the northern slopes of the Alps
foehn, föhn
southerly hot Saharan wind that blows across Egypt from March to May
khamsin
hot, dry Southern California wind from inland deserts to the Pacific coast
Santa Ana
strong, hot, sand-laden wind of the Sahara and Arabian deserts
simoom, simoon, samiel
small, rotating windstorm
whirlwind
small, usually brief whirlwind bearing sand, dust, or debris
dust devil
brief rainstorm with thunder and lightning
thundershower
sudden, heavy rainstorm
cloudburst
sometimes violent storm of thunder and lightning often accompanied by rain or hail
thunderstorm
periodic, seasonal change in wind direction that brings heavy rainfall to areas of southern Asia
monsoon
tropical cyclone of the western Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean
typhoon
destructive storm rotating around a low-pressure center, esp. one originating in the southwestern Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean
cyclone
persistent, planetary-scale cyclonic circulation of cold arctic air centered around either of the earth’s poles and sometimes moving southward
polar vortex
tropical cyclone, esp. of equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea, bringing severe wind and rain north, northwest, or northeast
hurricane
severe, destructive storm over a wide area
superstorm
sea spray blown by the wind
spindrift
column of water created by a tornado occurring over water
waterspout
storm in which rain freezes on contact with a cold surface
ice storm
usually polar snow condition in which there are no shadows and the horizon cannot be distinguished
whiteout
violent snowstorm with high winds and low visibility
blizzard
spiraling wind system with a high-pressure center that circles clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere
anticyclone
tropical cyclone less intense than a hurricane
tropical storm
fierce windstorm, accompanied by rain, thunder, and almost continuous lightning (up to 50 times per minute)
derecho
rotating, usually destructive column of wind, usually accompanied by a funnel-shaped extension downward of a cumulonimbus cloud, that advances over land in a narrow path
tornado, twister
severe thunderstorm with a rotating updraft, sometimes producing a tornado
supercell
flashes of electric light without thunder near the horizon, usually on hot summer evenings
heat lightning
rare form of lightning, associated with thunderstorms, taking the form of a luminous floating ball and believed to consist of ionized gas
ball lightning
warm ocean current originating in the Gulf of Mexico and passing Florida and the southeast coast of the U.S. before flowing northeast into the Atlantic Ocean
Gulf Stream
irregularly recurring (every few years) upwelling of warm water above the surface of the Pacific Ocean, generated along the western coast of South America, that disrupts usual regional and global weather patterns
El Niño
irregularly recurring (often following El Niño) upwelling of cold water above the surface of the Pacific Ocean, generated along the western coast of South America, that disrupts usual regional and global weather patterns
La Niña
broad and deep undulation of the ocean caused by an earthquake or distant storm
groundswell
giant fast-advancing ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption
tsunami, tidal wave, seismic sea wave
lunar phase when the moon is between the earth and the sun, making it visible at sunset only as a narrow crescent
new moon, dark of the moon
lunar phase when the entire disk of the moon is illuminated
full moon
the coinciding of a full moon or new moon with its nearest orbital position to the earth
supermoon
second full moon occurring within a single month
blue moon
lunar phase of a full moon closest in time to the autumnal (September) equinox
harvest moon
lunar phase showing half of an illuminated moon (first quarter or last quarter)
half-moon
lunar phase showing more than half of the moon illuminated
gibbous moon
lunar phase (waxing or waning) when less than half of the moon is illuminated
crescent moon
lunar phase when the visible moon is becoming gradually larger (between a new moon and a full moon)
waxing moon, increscent moon
lunar phase when the visible moon is becoming gradually smaller (between a full moon and a new moon)
waning moon, decrescent moon
in an orbit, the nearest point of the moon from the earth
perigee
in an orbit, the farthest point of the moon from the earth
apogee
either of two lunar orbital points (as during a solar or lunar eclipse) when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and the earth
syzygy
the envisioned or imaginary sphere having earth as its center
celestial sphere
on the celestial sphere, the great circle midway between the celestial poles or envisioned as on the same plane as the earth’s equator
celestial equator
the mean plane of earth’s orbit when it meets the celestial sphere, or the sun’s apparent path against the background of the sky
ecliptic
either of two points on the ecliptic when its distance is maximal from the celestial equator, reached by the sun about June 22 (summer solstice) or about December 22 (winter solstice)
solstice
either of two points on the celestial sphere when the celestial equator intersects the ecliptic (about March 21, the vernal equinox, and September 23, the autumnal equinox), when everywhere on earth day and night are of approximately equal duration
equinox
partial or total obscuring of one celestial body by another, as of the sun by the moon or the moon by the earth
eclipse
reddish moon associated with a total lunar eclipse
blood moon
eclipse when the moon is between the earth and the sun and, appearing smaller than the sun, has a bright ring around it
annular eclipse
area of only partial shadow, as during an eclipse
penumbra
point in the path of a celestial body when it is nearest the sun
perihelion
point in the path of a celestial body when it is farthest from the sun
aphelion
dark spot occasionally visible (usually only through a telescope) on the sun’s surface, associated with a strong magnetic field
sunspot
eruptive plume of hydrogen gas, causing a sudden brightness, from the sun’s surface, ranging in magnitude from A, B, C, M, to X class, the latter being the most powerful in peak flux
solar flare
outflowing of plasma through or from the sun’s corona
coronal mass ejection (CME)
orbiting celestial body (composed of ice and dust around a bright nucleus) that develops a long tail and becomes observable when near the sun
comet
orbiting rocky celestial body (esp. between the orbits of Mars and of Jupiter), ranging considerably in size
asteroid, planetoid
stony or metallic solid body in motion in space and smaller than an asteroid
meteoroid
meteoroid that becomes a bright streak in the sky from friction when it encounters the earth’s atmosphere
meteor, shooting star, falling star, fireball
meteor, or what remains of it despite vaporizing on contact with the earth’s atmosphere, that reaches or impacts the surface of the earth
meteorite
as seen through a thin cloud or haze, a luminous, faintly colored ring appearing around the moon or sun and caused by diffracted light from suspended droplets
corona
radiant streams of light visible at night in the upper atmosphere of earth’s magnetic polar region (caused by charged solar particles) occurring sporadically in middle and high latitudes of either hemisphere
aurora
aurora occurring in the Southern Hemisphere
aurora australis, southern lights
aurora occurring in the Northern Hemisphere
aurora borealis, northern lights
measure of reflectiveness of a celestial body
albedo
Note: For remembering these Latinate cloud classifications (introduced in 1803 by English chemist Luke Howard), it is helpful to know the meanings of the key affixes: cumulo-, heap or pile; strato-, cover or layer; cirro-, curl or hair; alto-, high; and nimbo-, rain cloud.
Low-Elevation Clouds
stratus
cloud mass like a formless gray horizontal sheet, from which may come drizzle; the sky looks heavy and leaden; bases and tops of clouds are uniform.
cumulus
separate, distinctively shaped puffs or fleecy domed or towered piles of cloud, brightly white in sunlight with darker base; upper parts often like cauliflower.
stratocumulus
grayish, rounded, roll-like masses forming an extensive layer; often look like altocumulus but are lower.
cumulonimbus
mountainously high and often dark storm cloud (or thunderheads) with swellings or “towers” and frequently a flattened, anvil-like top plume; often with ragged cloudlets underneath.
Middle-Elevation Clouds
altostratus
a gray and smooth, sometimes striated or fibrous (stringlike) uniform veil of grayish or bluish cloud through which the sun may palely shine (as if through frosted glass)
altocumulus
cloud mass of various shapes, disconnected lumps or patches or a jumble of billowing cloudlets white or gray or both; sometimes lining up in parallel bands; sometimes with “towers,” resembling cumulus.
nimbostratus
an amorphous gray or dark cloud layer, blotting out the sun and often unseen because rain or snow is falling from it; sometimes with ragged clouds below.
High-Elevation Clouds
cirrus
delicate white wisps or filaments of cloud, sometimes with a silky look; or like fibrous threads with hooks at the end; often seem to converge at a point on the horizon. A long and narrow cirrus cloud with a flowing appearance is a mare’s tail.
cirrostratus
a thin, smooth, fibrous whitish cloud with which one often sees a halo effect around (but not obscuring) the sun; contourless and transparent, with no shadows cast on the ground.
cirrocumulus
a thin white layer of cloud, with no shading and with a ripple or other regular pattern; usually too thin to cause shadows below; often known as mackerel clouds, a mackerel sky, or a buttermilk sky.
A sky-herd of cumulus clouds, on their way to bestow moist blessings on the mountains after cruelly deceiving the parched desert, began blotting out the sun and trailing dark shadow-shapes across the blistered land below, offering intermittent but welcome respite from the searing sunlight. When a racing cloud-shadow wiped its way over the ruins, the novice worked rapidly until the shadow was gone, then rested until the next bundle of fleece blotted out the sun.
—WALTER M. MILLER JR., A Canticle for Leibowitz
The POWs looked up. There, so high that they appeared to be gleaming slits in the sky, were acres and acres of B-29s, one hundred and eleven of them, flying toward an aircraft factory on the rim of the city. Caught in what would later be called the jet stream, the planes were streaking along at speeds approaching 445 miles per hour, almost 100 miles per hour faster than they were built to fly. The Americans had arrived.
—LAURA HILLENBRAND, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Boo Boo found it queerly difficult to keep Lionel in steady focus. The sun, though not especially hot, was nonetheless so brilliant that it made any fairly distant image—a boy, a boat—seem almost as wavering and refractional as a stick in the water. After a couple of minutes, Boo Boo let the image go. She peeled down her cigarette Army style, and then started toward the pier.
—J. D. SALINGER, “Down at the Dinghy,” Nine Stories
However the street led us to a square,and I saw the towers of a church sitting in the sky;between them the round yellow big moon looked immensely and peacefully conscious . . . no one was stirring in the little streets,all the houses were keeping the moon’s secret.
We walked on.
I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality. What was it? I knew—the moon’s picture of a town. These streets with their houses did not exist,they were but a ludicrous projection of the moon’s sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend,created by the hypnotism of moonlight.
—E. E. CUMMINGS, The Enormous Room
This was the manner of its coming. Before it, there was clear sky, and the sun shining upon new-fallen snow, a soft breeze from the west, moist and not cold. Then to the north was a line of high-banked, slate-gray cloud, and the mutter of thunder. Next, suddenly, the clouds darkened sun and sky, the north wind struck frigidly, and the air was thick with furious snow.
—GEORGE R. STEWART, Storm
Night falls quickly on the Equator; one minute it was sunny, the next it was dark, the Southern Cross low in the sky and the Milky Way thick overhead, the blackness of the river and its unpopulated banks impenetrable. Heat lightning flashed along the horizon, and I played a simple card-slapping game with Kleyton and five kids.
—CARL HOFFMAN, The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes
Ragged edges of black clouds peeped over the hills, and invisible thunderstorms circled outside, growing like wild beasts. . . . Before sunset the growling clouds carried with a rush the ridge of hills, and came tumbling down the inner slopes. Everything disappeared; black whirling vapours filled the bay, and in the midst of them the schooner swung here and there in the shifting gusts of wind.
—JOSEPH CONRAD, “Karain: A Memory,” Heart of Darkness and Other Tales
Years before her parents had given a dinner party. They had set up the long table in their parched and dry garden. It was the end of May but the drought had gone on and on and still there was no monsoon. Then, towards the end of the meal, the rains began. Anil woke in her bedroom to the change in the air, ran to her window and looked out. The guests were scurrying under the thickness of the downpour, carrying antique chairs into the house. But her father and the woman he was beside continued to sit at the table, celebrating the break in seasons, as earth turned to mud around them.
—MICHAEL ONDAATJE, Anil’s Ghost
That afternoon Peter, Kevin and I went fishing in the little outboard. The weather was hot, muggy, clouded over, and we waited in vain for a bite. We’d dropped anchor in a marsh where hollow reeds surrounded us and scratched the metal sides of the boat. I was sweating freely. Sweat stung my right eye. A mosquito spoke in my ear. The smell of gasoline from the engine (tilted up out of the shallow water) refused to lift and float away.
—EDMUND WHITE, A Boy’s Own Story
The jet stream is not steady; it convulses like a loose firehose, careening off mountains, veering across plains. These irregularities create continent-sized eddies that come ballooning out of the Arctic as deep cold fronts. They are called anticyclones because the cold air in them flows outwards and clockwise, the opposite of a low.
—SEBASTIAN JUNGER, The Perfect Storm
It is no easy matter to proceed, though, for the wind pours down the lane as through a funnel, and the road is of slippery bare slate, worn here and there into puddles of greasy clay, and Elsley slips back half of every step, while his wrath, as he tires, oozes out of his heels.
—CHARLES KINGSLEY, Two Years Ago
The eastern sun, full and fiery orange, just risen clear of the horizon, began slowly to sink back into the gray ocean of clouds as the plane started down; the sky altered; clouds changed aspects. To the southeast, delicate as frozen breath, an icy herd of mare’s tails rode high and sparkling in the upper light of the vanishing sun; they were veiled in crystalline haze as the plane descended through stratocirrus, the sun in iridescent halo at its disappearing upper limb. And below, slowly rising closer, the soft floor of carpeting clouds gradually changed into an ugly boil of endless gray billows, ominous, huge.
—H. L. HUMES, The Underground City
Above the whole valley, indeed, the sky was heavy with tumbling vapors, interspersed with which were tracts of blue, vividly brightened by the sun; but, in the east, where the tempest was yet trailing its ragged skirts, lay a dusky region of cloud and sullen mist, in which some of the hills appeared of a dark-purple hue.
—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun
I looked outside, watching the full moon hover in the sky beyond the tip of the aeroplane wing, childishly imagining it to be catching a free ride. We travelled for a while like that, the moon surfing on the wing, until the pilot warned us, in that proper British accent that we have come to associate with efficiency, to prepare for landing.
—MUKOMA WA NGUGI, Nairobi Heat
But of course the texture of that morning is clearer than the present, down to the drenched, wet feel of the air. It had rained in the night, a terrible storm, shops were flooded and a couple of subway stations closed; and the two of us were standing on the squelching carpet outside our apartment building while her favorite doorman, Goldie, who adored her, walked backwards down Fifty-seventh with his arm up, whistling for a taxi. Cars whooshed by in sheets of dirty spray; rain-swollen clouds tumbled high above the skyscrapers, blowing and shifting to patches of clear blue sky, and down below, on the street, beneath the exhaust fumes, the wind felt damp and soft like spring.
—DONNA TARTT, The Goldfinch
Down river, from Andy’s Landing, a burned-off cedar snag held the sun spitted like an apple, hissing and dripping juices against a grill of Indian Summer clouds. All the hillside, all the drying Himalaya vine that lined the big river, and the sugar-maple trees farther up, burned a dark brick and over-lit red.
—KEN KESEY, Sometimes a Great Notion
I asked why he’d wanted to leave their hometown of Budapest.
“Because Budapest is the City of Egrets,” she said.
She means the City of Regrets, I thought, then reminded myself—this was Borka.
City of egrets, city of tall, thin, spooky, watchful people.
We emerged from the metro in a neighborhood where apartment buildings yielded to stand-alone houses. The air was dirtier, the heated smog hovering at the height of the rain gutters in a tobacco-colored band.
—HEIDI JULAVITS, The Vanishers
This morning as always Maxine finds the oversize stoop aswarm with pupils, teachers on wrangler duty, parents and sitters, and younger siblings in strollers. The principal, Bruce Winterslow, acknowledging the equinox in a white suit and panama hat, is working the crowd, all of whom he knows by name and thumbnail bio, patting shoulders, genially attentive, schmoozing or threatening as the need arises.
—THOMAS PYNCHON, Bleeding Edge
To-day is a grey day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is grey—except the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it; grey earthy rock; grey clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the grey sea, into which the sand-points stretch like grey fingers. The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland. The horizon is lost in a grey mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a “brool” over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom.
—BRAM STOKER, Dracula
As the second day of their riding drew on, the heaviness in the air increased. In the afternoon the dark clouds began to overtake them: a somber canopy with great billowing edges flecked with dazzling light. The sun went down, blood-red in a smoking haze.
—J. R. R. TOLKIEN, The Two Towers
Cudjoe winces. A column of feathers and stinging grit rises from the cobblestones and sluices past him. Wind is steady moan and groan, a constant weight in his face, but it also bucks and roils and sucks and swirls madly, sudden stop and start, gust and dust devil and dervishes ripping the world apart. Clouds scoot as if they’re being chased.
—JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, Philadelphia Fire
Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus—huge towers of modelled vapour, looking as white as Monday’s washing and as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away.
—T. H. WHITE, The Once and Future King
The storm bore down on the mountain with a primordial intensity unlike anything Paljor had ever experienced. The temperature plunged to minus 50, cold enough to freeze exposed flesh straight through in minutes. Gusts approaching eighty miles per hour ripped across the high escarpments, threatening to fling Paljor off the ridge like a bit of straw.
—NICK HEIL, Dark Summit
Outside, the clouds above the mountain had lowered while Trudi changed her clothes, and a white mist had blanked out the summit, which meant alpine weather on the way but they were dressed for it. They walked through the town past the little shops and the statue of Goethe, then started up one of the trails. About twenty minutes later a few flakes of snow came drifting down—big, soft flakes that spun through the still air. Trudi wiped her face with her mitten. Orlova’s cap turned from red to white. A wind stirred, then grew stronger and sighed through the forest, while the branches of the pine trees bowed with the weight of the new snow.
—ALAN FURST, Mission to Paris
. . . the train is rolling eastward and the changing wind veers for the moment from an easterly quarter, and we face east, like Swedenborg’s angels, under a sky clear save where far to the northeast over distant mountains whose purple has faded, lies a mass of almost pure white clouds, suddenly, as by a light in an alabaster lamp, illumined from within by gold lightning, yet you can hear no thunder. . . .
—MALCOLM LOWRY, Under the Volcano
But by early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine. . . . The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spill across the flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars. And small fish appear in the puddles that fill the PWD potholes on the highways.
—ARUNDHATI ROY, The God of Small Things
When the sky was furrowed with wispy bands of altostratus cloud the colour ranged from the most delicate pearl-pinks to the deepest fiery red. Sometimes it was so breathtakingly beautiful that Donald and I rushed for our cameras to capture its ephemeral glory.
—JOHN LISTER–KAYE, The White Island
At this moment the door burst open and Giorgio staggered into the living room, mesmerizing its four occupants. He was drenched, and his luxuriant wavy hair was plastered to his skull, giving him the look of some Cro-Magnon charmer. The topers by the fire became aware that the blizzard had changed to a torrential downpour.
—JOHN ASHBERY AND JAMES SCHUYLER, A Nest of Ninnies
After an hour of heavy rain in tunnel-darkness, the light reveals a fog cloud hugging the grass. How long has it been right in front of me, invisibly close and an acre wide? A giant fogbow appears in the rising light. This one shines blue to orange and arches across the road like a mystical staircase. I’ve known them to be double the size of common rainbows and sweep 360 degrees to include the whole vista.
—DIANE ACKERMAN, Dawn Light
High gauzes and drags of cloud, in where the blue was strongest: he’d learned what that meant. “Cirrostratus . . . moisture . . . It freezes up there. Everything freezes up there.” Catching the idea before it pushed in any further and turned nasty. “There’ll have been a storm somewhere. Earlier.”
—A. L. KENNEDY, Day
It was quieter than the quietest night. And the clouds drifted across the sky with the same terrible, icy, inhuman slowness. Also there were changes of colour. The scene became tinted with mauve. She watched cumulus gather on the horizon; saw it break into three, and with continuous changes of shape and colour the clouds started their journey across the sky.
—D. M. THOMAS, The White Hotel
If you could stand it, you could look straight down, nearly a mile down to the canyon floor. Alexandra would like to go try it when she got home. She was sure it would terrify her, even though looking out the little plastic window in the airplane for some reason didn’t. Reading about the skywalk, and looking out her window here at the sullen wet day, with its purplish wisps travelling sideways across a backdrop of dirty-white rolls of nimbus cloud, made her miss the West—its dryness, its bisque color, like a landscape all of pottery.
—JOHN UPDIKE, The Witches of Eastwick
After his car had backed out of the driveway, I just lay in my lower bunk, looking up at the slats of Patty’s bed above me, listening to the soft, comforting sound of my sister’s breathing, and thought of climbing the ladder and getting in beside her. Outside, I heard the howl of a coyote again—the new moon brought them out—and shivered. It felt as if the whole rest of the world was falling apart, and all I wanted was to hold on tight to the one person who wasn’t going anywhere.
—JOYCE MAYNARD, After Her
The moon, it has been reported, was full, and the light that rained down cast the leaves of the eucalyptuses into spectral coin.
—JUNOT DÍAZ, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I recognized the tortuous, tattered band of the Milky Way, with Vega very bright between sun and earth; and Sirius and Orion shone splendid against the unfathomable blackness in the opposite quarter of the heavens. The Pole Star was overhead, and the Great Bear hung over the circle of the earth. And away beneath and beyond the shining corona of the sun were strange groupings of stars I had never seen in my life—notably, a dagger-shaped group that I knew for the Southern Cross.
—H. G. WELLS, Under the Knife
The colors that are actually seen depend strongly on the observer’s eyesight and the strength of the aurora. Weak aurorae often appear almost colorless, or a pale green. People who have poor low-light red sensitivity may be unable to see the red and purple-violet tints in even major displays, despite seeing the pale green coloration easily. Red aurorae are often mistaken for distant fires.
—STORM DUNLOP, The Weather Identification Handbook
What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire?
Its universality . . . its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts . . . its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamor-phoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes . . . the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.
—JAMES JOYCE, Ulysses