January 9, 2010: Henry Coe state park

Rogelio Bernal Andreo

I arrived at Coe at 8:20pm. It was cloudy with sucker holes (which to me is equal to useless) with a hopeful clearing in the west. Tony Hurtado, Lee and Chris were also there (I didn't catch their last names). Tony told me the "hopeful clearing" in the west had been there for 3 hours but the clouds just weren't disappearing...

So I set my table and chair and ate my sandwich, while chatting with Tony and Lee. Around 9pm the clouds spread above us and the sucker holes disappeared, the clearing on the west was still there. Around 9:30pm Tony and Lee decided it was time to start packing. Then the clouds started to break at which point I started to set up. By 10pm, Tony and Lee were ready to go. Lee was "look, it's clearing!" and Tony replied "I don't want to look!". They left, I think knowing that they were leaving behind what they had been waiting for all night. By 10:15pm it was obvious it was going to clear and by 10:30pm it was indeed 100% clear, with a surprisingly good transparency, I'd say above average for Coe. Seeing was really good. Only Chris and I were there by then.

It stayed 100% clear all night after that. Around 1:30am transparency started to degrade a bit to become average (still not bad). Seeing also degraded a bit around 2am but it was still pretty good. There was zero dew all night, no wind, and the temps remained steady at a comfortable 50-52F (on my way down, in foggy Morgan Hill it was 39-40F).

All night we could see fog and haze over the valley - it helped a bit but it wasn't thick enough to create that spooky Coe we all know and love.

I started packing around 2:45am and left at 3:15am. Chris stayed there, though he said he'd be leaving soon.

Overall, a very good night with a late start (for this time of the year at least). Or like Julien told me around 4pm "tonight's the night, man!" :-)