The beach was absolutely deserted when I arrived (not counting the gatekeeper who dutifully collected $6 for parking), which made sense — it had been a cold, rainy day in November, and it was almost sunset besides. The sand was all wet, covered with tiny little pockmarks from the rain.

Rain was still falling in Santa Monica to the north and somewhere inland in the South Bay — possibly Torrance or Redondo Beach. Lit from the side, Santa Monica looked like there was a golden haze above the city.

It was clear enough that I could see the silhouette of Catalina Island off in the distance to the south (though I didn’t get any good photos of it). I was surprised at how much more I could see from the beach than from my office window, only a couple of miles inland. (I have to remember: LAX is huge.)

As the sun dipped below the horizon, it lit up a column of clouds red from below. Even afterward, it lit up the edges of distant clouds just barely visible peeking over the horizon.

The rain started up again as I left, getting stronger as I drove inland. By the time I got home, I was ready to use an umbrella just walking from the garage to the front door. About a minute later, it really opened up, and I made the mistake of going out to check the mail. Instant soak.

Full photo set (8) at Flickr.

One day a few weeks ago, I tried to make it to the nearest beach I could in time for sunset. I missed…but while on the mostly-deserted beach I caught some nice views of pink underlit clouds over the Santa Monica Mountains, and this view of a closed lifeguard tower at El Segundo Beach.

Then there was the clear afternoon when I went exploring the Palos Verdes area, looking for public parks where I could see the LA basin. Not much luck on that count, but as sunset approached, I decided to see if I could make it up to Del Cerro Park (more photos from this spot taken during daylight) up at the top of the bluffs. I did, and because the park is actually higher than the next hill over, I got to watch the sun set over the ocean and behind a hill at the same time.

I stayed up there for a good 20 minutes after sunset, watching the sky darken through twilight. It was incredibly windy that evening, and even from a thousand feet up with no direct sunlight, I could still watch the waves between the mainland and Catalina Island, moving slowly through the strait like tiny ripples in the direction of the wind.

This was the view that surprised me the most: Bright orange (a little more magenta in real life than it looks here in the photo) on the underside of the clouds, but plain gray on the sides.

Here are a couple of views of the rainbow and Downtown Los Angeles in the distance, a little bit earlier.

Looking northwest across LAX toward the Santa Monica Mountains. The sun is out of frame to the left. Oh, who am I kidding? It was behind a building, so I aimed at what I could see.

More photos: LA post-storm rainbow & sunset

So I did what any geek would do: looked up the angle at which the sun had set that evening.

I found two tools: The NOAA solar position calculator let me figure out, given latitude, longitude and time, the sun’s declination. Then I found another tool that let me enter the latitude, longitude, and compass bearing and see a line drawn on a map.

It turned out that the sun was setting roughly 21° north of due west, putting it roughly in line with the coast from Malibu toward Ventura…on the seaward side. The line finally connected with land out toward Point Conception, roughly 120 miles away. That’s probably too far away to be visible from near sea level, depending on how high the mountains are out there, but if the angle was off just a little bit (I did estimate the time), it could easily have be the Santa Monica mountains above Malibu (more like 20 miles).

So yes, I did watch the sun set over the ocean and over land at the same time!

After a few minutes, the train hit exactly the right angle to catch the setting sun itself reflected in all the downtown buildings! It was bright enough to completely overwhelm my cameraphone, as you can see.

The view when I stepped out of the office last Thursday night. Not retouched at all except for cropping.

I stepped out of the office building tonight and felt like I’d stepped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. The whole sky looked like this. (Or at least the half that was visible.) It literally stopped me in my tracks.

I spent the next 15 minutes walking around the parking lot, watching the lighting on the clouds change as the sun set, and taking pictures.

Last Thursday evening, this was the view from one of the office windows.

Herringbone Moon, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Later that night, I took this photo. Or rather, these photos, since it’s a composite of two, one which picked up the herringbone pattern of the clouds and one which picked up the moon and the corona surrounding it.

The sunset view as I left the office this evening. The clouds turned even deeper orange over the drive home, with streamers of pink running halfway across the sky.