As rare as it is poorly understood, you’re more likely to see anything else on this page by a significant exponent. I wish I could explain to you what a plasmoid actually is other than a plasma-related phenomena that sometimes occurs in space on the night side of planets.

Noctilucent clouds are much more readily understood than plasmoids. But what they’re doing at the 38th parallel in February is a mystery to me. Because they are rare, high-altitude ice crystal clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds, that form 31-50 miles high in the mesosphere in the summer months (May–August in the Northern Hemisphere) 30–60 minutes after sunset or before sunrise when they are still illuminated by the sun while the lower atmosphere is in darkness.

I was in Albuquerque for a month shooting hotels, during that month I made as many trips as I could to the overlook at Sandia Crest trying to get lightning from the summer storms. Though this isn’t a rare phenomena, seeing it from this vantage apparently is because I had the whole place to myself every time. It’s hard to believe that of all the people those lights represent below, none wanted to see this bad enough to peel their eyes away from the sitcom rerun they were watching, get off the couch, and drive 20 minutes.

This little Juniper snag sits before the northern horizon, and after many attempts at framing it with something interesting I had all but given up due to the disgusting city-glow from Colorado Springs ruining the shot. Finally, an unlikely aurora following a strong Coronal Mass Ejection gave me the opportunity. Check out my gallery AURORA AT LAKE PUEBLO 11-11-25 for other similarly eye-catching images.

A mother Bobcat (top-left) was enjoying the view with her grown cubs from the edge of Rock Canyon below the Lake Pueblo Dam. Seen November 20th in 2016, this was likely one of the last such tender moments these cats would ever have together before the cubs set off on their own. Btw, I knew who the mother was because the other three were taking turns rubbing onto her affectionately. It was truly touching to watch.

Large and colorful meteors like this are an uncommon sight, I have very few on camera despite literally hundreds and maybe a thousand or more nights spent pointing my glass at the sky. None so far more perfectly framed and beautiful as this. This shot represents 10 years of frequent attempts.

Do I really need to explain why this is crazy rare?

This shot is basically unaltered from how it looked. I didn’t tone down the color of the sky or mess with the contrast much, this was just the smoke from 2017’s terrible wildfires.

More from 2017’s wildfires. This was truly horrible, but it did make for some interesting skies. Like the old curse “may you live in interesting times”, “may you have interesting skies” is similarly a mixed bag. Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos, but oh how I do bitch and moan when I have boring blue sky conditions.

This one was extremely hard to shoot for some reason, no setting I could configure in-camera could replicate the color and luminosity of the sun. This is my best attempt at using photoshop to restore the original light and color.

They do happen every handful of years, but if you’re trying to see it you’re more likely to be plagued with cloudy skies than not.

I have to admit that I really don’t know for sure if this is a Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud, because they are almost entirely seen as a sort of ocean-wave like pattern. This is more of a helical, DNA-like formation. They are usually pretty small, and don’t last very long, but I do see these formations popping up over the eastern slope of the Wet Mountain range rarely. More rarely as clearly represented here and with great sunset colors to boot.

These are rare to see so far south, because most people living here want absolutely nothing to do with the -15F temps involved in creating them. Penguins probably see them all the time.

I saw the flash a few times leading up to this as I carefully navigated the slick roads to get to a good vantage, so I estimated the exposure settings I’d need and set up where I thought the next one would hit. It happened just barely out of frame, but the resulting light was still very beautiful. Not quite a W, but I wouldn’t call it an L either. If there’s anything to be learned from this gallery it’s that I’m persistent as fuck, so expect better thundersnow in the future. Oh, and it’s super rare, of course.

Sub-zero temperatures and just the right surface conditions give this rare phenomena a chance to form, which it does at lake pueblo fairly often in the coldest weather. Since the lake surface rarely (or never) freezes entirely, when the temps dip and the cold, unstable air mass meets the warmer water, cyclones of upward-rushing steam form. They march in a line up the river channel, driven by the chaotic clash of drastically different temperatures.

Certainly shows how tough they are. Eyes crusted with snow, and still capable of issuing that death stare. Most of my owl photography is rare because of how difficult a subject wild owls can be around here. But this one stands out to me. Many professional looking owl photos you see are captive or rescued birds in an essentially studio-like setting, so you’re never likely to see them facing adverse conditions.