SUNSET: 
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M. Ranjbaran / S&T Online Photo Gallery
How often have you fallen prey to sucker holes — spotting a break in the thick blanket of clouds above, hurrying to get your gear set up so that you might actually get to see something tonight, only for the gap to close while you were adjusting the tripod?
If your answer is “never” then, a) you’ve been incredibly lucky, and b) I don’t believe you.
It’s been an especially overcast winter. While this current cycle is “relatively weak,” we’re in our third consecutive La Niña winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in the Pacific Northwest, that means cooler and even wetter weather. Yes, the area is infamous for our rainy season, but we usually get an adequate number of clear if chilly nights for winter stargazing. This season, however, Portland has been Cloud City, with even promising nights marred by high haze.
Because I’m not a weather wizard — but I’m willing to learn! — I’ve spent most of the winter checking for sucker holes.
“What’s a sucker hole?” M asked me one night, when I stepped outside for the third time since we finished dinner. Pausing the movie we’re watching or taking a quick break from conversation to check the sky has become a familiar habit. More often than not, I have a pair of binoculars ready to go by the front door.
“It’s a small break in the clouds,” I explained. “And you’re a sucker if you think you can get your gear outside in time to see anything.”
He laughed, but I was only half-kidding.
My astronomy friend, Dale, describes his watch for sucker holes as being not unlike a World War Two submariner movie. Having his gear on standby, he says, is like waiting for klaxons to sound, with “ALERT! ALERT!” echoing through the kitchen should a gap in the clouds appear, followed by a mad scramble to take advantage of the view.
The truth is, when all you’ve got are sucker holes, you learn to adjust your stargazing plans. Binoculars are particularly handy for stepping outside for a quick look up when time is not on your side. Sometimes, I’ll have only a few minutes before the gap revealing Orion’s Sword closes up again.
There have been nights when I stood on the porch and willed myself to enjoy watching the clouds drift by, while my yearning for the sky went into hibernation. Other nights, I lost myself in the romance of a familiar asterism barely peeking through the wispy cloud cover.
Sometimes the overcast conditions lasted so long I began to feel like a character in Hugh Howey’s post-apocalyptic Wool trilogy: dwelling in an underground silo and looking through dirty windows into a thick, gray haze, trying to remember what the stars look like.
Even under tricky conditions, I can frequently count on Sirius to center itself in a tiny pocket or hover below the cloud line. It’s a fun and easy twinkling target. If you ever need a quick pick-me-up when Alpha Canis Majoris is visible, viewing Sirius at magnification is like looking directly into the beam of a disco laser pointer.
I’ve started to think of gaps in the clouds as either tricksters or friendlies, though I can’t tell the difference on sight. Sometimes these holes offer a window just large enough to kindle a bit of wonder. Other times, they’re like Lucy with the football in a Peanuts comic strip.
I got caught by a trickster hole just the other night, shortly before Portland got dumped on by record-breaking snowfall and icy temperatures. In my pajamas and ready for bed, I stepped outside for one last peek at the sky, only to find an unexpected and massive hole through which Orion, Taurus, and more were visible. Time to grab some gear, quick! But I was a sucker. In the maybe 45 seconds it took me to grab a pair of warm socks, a hat, and a coat, the sky was socked in again.
But it’s March already, and the year will turn. Spring will come, bringing another galaxy season. The weather services are predicting a better than average chance of returning to “normal conditions” as the winter fades. The clouds will scatter and the nights will warm up as the days lengthen — prime time for summer insomnia.
In the meantime, as we languish under overcast skies, I’ve learned to be grateful for sucker holes, or at least for the friendlies mixed in with the tricksters. It sure beats not being able to see anything at all.
Comments
Rod
March 6, 2023 at 1:29 pm
This is great! LoL 🙂
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Jen Willis
March 6, 2023 at 3:08 pm
Thanks. 🙂
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Ernie Ostuno
March 6, 2023 at 5:00 pm
I live downwind of Lake Michigan, so clear nights are especially rare from November to April. There have been many fine conjunctions, eclipses and other celestial events clouded out. I have also been victimized by the opposite of sucker holes, the "standing wave" clouds. You have probably seen these clouds forming in the Pacific Northwest over the mountains where they are called "cap clouds", but they can also form over any topographical feature that provides lift to moving air. The cool thing is they usually don't cover the whole sky, but seem to invariably cover the part of the sky that I want to look at.
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Jen Willis
March 7, 2023 at 1:29 pm
"Invariably" — yep.
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Anthony Barreiro
March 6, 2023 at 6:04 pm
I got a little spoiled during the previous multi-year drought here in California. The past couple of months of very wet and cloudy weather have reminded what a normal winter is like! Sucker holes and binoculars. I've had to force myself not to look out the window while I'm cooking and eating dinner, just to be able to finish dinner at a reasonable hour.
Fortunately the sky here in San Francisco was clear enough last Wednesday to witness the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. I carried a spotting scope up to the top of the local hill and shared the view with passersby. Haven't done that for a while! I had some good conversations and shared a bit of solar system geometry with folks who were interested. Then there was the guy who was certain Venus and Jupiter were the headlights on a UFO ... .
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Jen Willis
March 7, 2023 at 1:30 pm
UFO sightings aside, lucky you for getting to see the Venus-Jupiter conjunction! We spied it briefly the other night while walking a neighbor's dog, but then the skies clouded over again by the time we got back home.
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Anthony Barreiro
March 7, 2023 at 9:50 pm
There are always a lot of people walking their dogs on the hill. I have never met a dog that had any idea there could be anything interesting to look at in the sky. Their universe is very different than ours. It's remarkable that we get along so well.
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Kevan Hubbard
March 10, 2023 at 4:17 pm
I've never heard of them called sucker holes and I generally call them cloud gaps! Because you can only see a bit of the sky through them you are left wondering what you are seeing even if it's a bright star that pops out unless the sky parts in front of the Pleiades or Orion!
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Jen Willis
March 11, 2023 at 12:29 pm
You're right about the loss of context clues. Sometimes it's fun to take a guess at what that little pinprick of light in the cloud gap might be, and then check Stellarium to see how close I was.
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Kirk Keyes
March 10, 2023 at 11:22 pm
Awesome article! As a fellow Portlander, I feel your pain! Ever since getting clouded out with the total solar eclipse that passed over Portland in 1979, I've resigned myself to being a frustrated amateur astronomer as long as I continue to live here...
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Jen Willis
March 13, 2023 at 4:40 pm
It's definitely a challenge. My ideal would be clouds and rain during the day, then clear skies at night.
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JerryO
March 11, 2023 at 2:33 am
Great article, Jen! I live on the south end of the same valley (Willamette valley) and am subject to the same sucker hole phenomenon. I keep an Astroscan on the kitchen counter for those thirty-second gaps. Rush outside, plop it on the hood of the car, and have a peek at Jupiter's moons. A friend and I have an ongoing contest to see who can identify the moons on any given night. Even a ten-second look will often provide enough clues.
The most frustrating sucker holes are the ones that lure me out of town with my binoscope, which takes about 20 minutes to set up. Perfectly clear sky when I arrive at the observing site, perfectly clear while setting up...then the fog rises up out of the valley and wipes out the sky. We often get those standing wave clouds that Ernie mentioned above. I can pack back up and drive half a mile and set up again under clear sky. I often think that astronomy was the dumbest hobby I could have chosen here in the Pacific Northwest, but I love it nonetheless. You just need to develop an appreciation for the fickle finger of fate. (I just dated myself, didn't I?)
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Jen Willis
March 11, 2023 at 12:34 pm
Thanks, Jerry! Good to see you here. Excellent note about getting fooled by sucker holes (and sneaker clouds?) when you're mounting even a single-night dark(er) sky expedition out of town—whereas I was merely complaining about conditions in the yard. I sometimes daydream about possible retirement locations that would be more hospitable to this hobby, but I've come to love the Pacific Northwest regardless.
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467ParkAinslie
March 19, 2023 at 8:41 am
Curious here... Did you invent the term? Because I've been using it myself since spending a frustrating night in the car with my hubby in February '96, chasing holes in a mostly cloudy sky, trying to see Comet Hyakutake. I got tired of this after the third hole closed up before we reached it, but HE wanted to carry on, and he was at the wheel. Frustration is the godmother of invention.
During the recent apparition of Comet ZTF, I got to hear one brand-new observer at a less-than-successful, middle-of-the-night star party explain sucker holes to a new arrival...that was fun.
Around here (also downwind of Lake Michigan), we also have the term "Messier Zero" for the appearance of the cloudy sky over downtown Fort Wayne, with a "nucleus" over the Summit Building (which is lit up by banks of lights aimed at it from below, with results you can probably imagine - shudder). Haven't seen standing wave clouds (we're too far from the lake), but in their place we seem to have "louver clouds," which are like mackerel clouds but with larger gaps.
I don't know why I'm still in this hobby either. Maybe it's just that I love it.
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Jen Willis
March 27, 2023 at 8:02 pm
I definitely didn't invent the term "sucker hole," but I'm tickled by "Messier Zero." That's a good one.
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