The night the sky looked like a giant fish over Surrey

Some nights you can’t sleep and it turns out to be a gift.

It was March 3 — a Tuesday, nothing remarkable about it. My partner and I had tea earlier that evening and neither of us could wind down. He got up and started doing a lap around the apartment, checking windows because it was windy outside. And then he stopped and called me over.

I was half asleep at that point, barely functioning, but when he showed me the photos he’d just taken from the window, I woke up real quick. The full moon was sitting right between two huge, smooth clouds that stretched across the sky like something alive. My first half-asleep thought? It looked like a giant fish — specifically a koinobori, those Japanese carp streamers you see flying during Children’s Day festivals, with their big round mouths wide open catching the wind. The clouds had that same flowing, almost breathing quality to them, and the moon glowing in the centre looked like a giant eye staring back.

Those clouds though

I tried looking up what kind of clouds these were after the fact. The closest thing I found was lenticular clouds, which form when moist air flows over mountains and creates standing waves on the other side. They’re known for looking like stacked UFOs or flying saucers, and they show up more often than you’d think in Metro Vancouver because of the North Shore Mountains.

Ours didn’t look quite as dramatic as the classic examples you’ll find on Google, but they had that same smooth, sculpted quality and that eerie way of just hovering in place. Whether they were true lenticular clouds or just the wind doing something beautiful with the moisture that night, I honestly don’t know. What I do know is they made a very normal Tuesday feel like a scene from a Studio Ghibli film.

The Worm Moon

March’s full moon is traditionally called the Worm Moon, named for the earthworms that start surfacing as the ground thaws. Not the most glamorous name for a moon that looked this cinematic. Bright, perfectly centred between those flowing cloud layers, with warm light from the buildings below adding just enough contrast. We were awewe in pajamas.

And then a meteor showed up

Here’s the part that still gets me. This was the same night a meteor streaked across the Metro Vancouver sky. Just after 9 p.m., a fireball exploded in the atmosphere, lighting up everything from horizon to horizon and setting off sonic booms that rattled windows across the Lower Mainland. NASA later confirmed it was travelling at roughly 100 times the speed of sound.

We didn’t catch the meteor itself, but knowing all of this happened on the same night makes these photos feel even more surreal. The sky was really doing the most that day.

Sometimes you just have to look up

I think what I love most about this is that we didn’t have to go anywhere. Just insomnia, a cup of tea that wouldn’t let us sleep, and someone who thought to check the windows.

That’s one of the things about living in Metro Vancouver that’s easy to take for granted. All you have to do is look up.