Our stormy January has produced a series of cool pictures from space. I'm partial to the photomosaics published every day on NASA's Worldview site.
You need to be a little patient each day, as the northern Pacific, where our weather is coming from, is generally the last part of the globe to be imaged each day by two NASA satellites orbiting about 430 miles up.
But the wait is usually worth it. Summertime images have often given dramatic evidence of California wildfires. And in the winter -- or at least this winter -- Worldview captures magnificent pictures of the big cyclones that have brought wave after wave of rain and wind to the West Coast this month.
The picture above (clipped from the original on Worldview) is of a system that's expected to bring two distinct rounds of stormy weather to the Bay Area and most of California, starting late Thursday.
The California Nevada River Forecast Center, in its Wednesday morning writeup of upcoming weather, describes the storm as "an impressive ... system spinning over the northeast Pacific near 47 North latitude and 147 West longitude. A broad cloud shield extends from just off the Pacific Northwest coast to the southwest. ... The moisture tap is also fairly impressive, extending from near the Hawaiian Islands to the northeast and then wrapping into the main circulation."