Rain water: Crystals? Mold? Spores?
About a week ago, my early morning was interrupted by the boom of rolling thunder. Stormy weather being something of a rarity here in Seattle; I made a trip to the roof to take in the atmosphere. I brought a petri dish with me to grab a sample from the torrential downpour. The lighnting storm wound up being short-lived, but my rain sample has been fascinating me for days.
I’ve been trying out various stains and observation techniques. One of my first observations were the presence of what I’m calling “ghost filaments”. These were free-floating strands that were fairly common in fresh droplets. They appear less solid and fully-formed than the filaments I regularly encounter, but they appear to share many basic characteristics. They’re primarily translucent and somewhat difficult for the microscope to resolve. They seem to hang suspended in the sample as if they possess some mild buoyancy.
Next I took a number of brightfield images at higher magnifications. I’d utilized methylene blue and natural red stains interchangeably, so I never felt certain what I was seeing wasn’t some byproduct of introducing the stains to the sample. But the experimentation was worthwhile.
Finally, I became fed up trying to distinguish between natural sample behaviors and potential contaminants introduced via staining. I took a fresh slide directly outside and held it up to the rain. The results are perplexing and unexpected to me:
These formations developed in under 30 minutes. They're still fresh, so I intend to continue observations. I do live along the Pacific Coast. Perhaps that has some influence on these results? These formations strike me as some in-between of crystals, spores, and plant life. Not what I expected to see in fresh rainwater.
Hi Will great pics...does look like mold spotches (fern-like) but what are the very shiny things on the last picture? bots? metals? none of it is surprising, they are terraforming the entire planet and ecosystem and atmosphere. I was just reading about nano dust - smaller than specs of dust, miniature chips that video, surveil record and transmit data back to HQ. Spywear. Dropped by chemtrails and ground level hand spread anywhere. All over buildings and structures everywhere. And - it's "smart"
I don't know if you're able to look at snowfall handy to you sometime, it'd be very interesting to look at. I heard Reinette Senum talk about how shocked she's been at what they're noticing visually seen in the deteriorating quality and natural character of it. like - what are snowflakes even like nowadays? she apparently did a documentary going way up north of where you are, documenting phenomenal changes to snow and claims it doesn't even feel like normal snow does - the whole nature of it has been changed. She' friends with that lawyer Peggy Hall and was then going on to make a huge political dent in the climate atttacks on the environment . She has teams of ppl all over taking obs and data. It'd be cool to have a micronaught's insights too.