Tag Archives: snow

Weather

Spring? Well, Technically…

Despite what the calendar say, Mother Nature has decided that winter should hold on for just a bit longer.

Yesterday, it began snowing around noon. And it kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing. The weatherdudes were expecting 1-2″ throughout the day. By 5pm, we had half a foot of snow on the ground, with the snowfall just beginning to taper off. It was a crazy, crazy snowfall, and beautiful to boot. There was no wind, so the snow just collected on the tree limbs and bushes. Even this morning, it’s beautiful, with a bluebird sky as the backdrop for this early spring snow.

God sure paints a pretty canvas.

Weather

Sasquatch is Covered… Again!

After torrential downpours all day yesterday, we were visited by the snow bunnies during the night. Ol’ Sasquatch appears to once again be carrying a load of snow upon his back.

North of here, maybe 40-50 miles, it was 6-12″ of snow. South of here by the same amount, it was severe storms, with tornado warnings up as I went to bed last night.

Unfortunately, I’m not out playing in the white stuff. Yesterday, I started coming down with some kind of bug, which has me down, and so icky, I don’t even wanna be around myself. The good news is that today seems to be better, so maybe I can get a little shooting and playing guitar in before the weekend comes to a close.

Photoblog, Weather

There’s No ‘Pocalypse Like Snowpocalypse!

OK, so this’ll be the last of my wining about the missed opportunity with the recent weather.

As the storm was descending upon us on Monday, I set up my Canon G10 in a bedroom window, shooting for a timelapse video of the impending doom. Of course, we all know what happened — not much! — but the video is kinda cool, and the longest timelapse I’ve attempted. I shot it at pretty low resolution, wanting to capture as many frames as possible, so if the power stayed on, I’ve have days of images to put together.

We had power, I had frames, but not much in the way of weather.

There’s two kinda cool things in this video that grabbed my attention. The first is the bush in the foreground bending under the weight of the ice. In truth, I was hoping to get a lot more ice, and see more of that kind of action. The second is the activity around the neighbor’s car as he cleans it off. Also cool, I think.

Oh, and for those folks that are saying I’m not putting enough imagery on the site lately, here’s 14,576 images to tide you over. 🙂

Weather

Snowpocalypse? More like Nopocalypse!

After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the massive winter storm that clobbered the Midwest, guess who didn’t get hardly any snow?

Us.

We had 1/4″ of ice, about 3″ of sleet, and barely any snow at all. However, travel about 30mi NW from here, and you could measure the snow in feet. Once again, the dastardly St. Louis Snow Shield has deflected the really good stuff around us — too far north for ice, too far south for snow, we were left to more sleet than I’ve ever seen, and nothing particularly pretty to photograph.

Bum-mer.

Weather

The Iceman Runneth Away with His Tail Between His Legs

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It seems like there’s good news… and it has nothing to do with a gecko, magically summonable agents, or Flo.

The local news has named the storm: Megasnow 2011!!!

And why the snow-based name? Well, it appears that our event is gonna be more snow than ice. We do have freezing rain coming down like crazy right now, but the low pressure center is deepening, which is bringing in the cold air quicker, making the changeover to snow happen earlier. Oh, we’re still gonna have ice, but it’ll be down in the 1/4″ – 1/2″ range, which should enhance our chances to keep the lights on.

But the snow… oh, the snow! We’ve got a predicted band over us of 9″ to 16″, with areas just 30mi or so north getting 24″ or more. We’ll get the heavier stuff if the thudersnow that’s being predicted takes place. The current hard prediction for Da Lou is 10.8″, with that 16″ number definitely reachable as things progress through today and tonight. I don’t think the snowfall is supposed to stop until sometime tomorrow, which is why we’ve got blizzard warnings and a governor-declared “state of emergency” here. Basically, we’re being told to go now to wherever it is that we plan to be for the duration of the storm — probably 48 hours or more.

Assuming the power stays on, we’re in good shape. Darla laid in a hefty supply of food on Sunday, which should allow us to survive Megasnowpacalypsemageddonpalooza 2011. One of her friends actually picked up the very last dozen eggs in one of the local markets on Sunday!

As this storm has unfurled itself, there’ve been comparisons against the blizzard of ’82 and the ice storm of ’06. One of the talking heads this morning reminded all of us in tv-land that in those two years, the Cards won the World Series.

Go Cards!!!! 🙂

Weather

Snowmageddon? Snowpacalypse? Winterpalooza?

Well, something’s up — that’s for sure.

This morning, the freezing rain began, with everything getting a nice glaze to it by lunchtime. And then things slowed down…. big time. It rained, at 30 degrees. It thundered here and there. And we waited.

All the while, the local government was quite impressive, flexing their “readiness” muscles for all the cameras to see. To my memory, this seems like the most civilly prepared our area has been for something like this since I’ve lived here. And that’s good. This storm doesn’t look like your typical midwest winter event.

Snowmageddon!

From what I gather, we’re due for 1/2″ to 1″ of ice tonight into tomorrow, and then something like 8″ to 12″ of snow on top of that Tuesday into Wednesday, with 40mph winds blowing around the ice-laden power lines and tree limbs.

Snowpacalypse.

Frankly, I’m gonna be real surprised if we don’t loose power in this deal. Our power lines in the neighborhood are underground, but the feeders not too far away are pole-based, and out there for the mangling. That’s what happened four years ago, and we were without power for 35 hours or so.

Winterpalooza.

So we wait. Waiting for a big storm, one that the weather service has called potentially historic. For me, I think it’ll mean some ice photography — yay! — and some time spent in my second favorite atmospheric condition (only behind tornadoes). This kind of stuff is pretty rare for Da Lou, and I’m gonna lap it up while it’s still around!

Vacation, Weather

FST II : Day Four – Southern Utah Loop

After a slow start this morning, we decided to make a loop around the area — about 150 miles — visiting Valley of the Gods, Mexican Hat and Natural Bridges National Monument.

Valley of the Gods was billed as a smaller version of Monument Valley, and it lived up to it. Plenty of red rocks catching plenty of sunlight… and clouds, but more on that later. We toured around the area, along a 17 mile road that went from gravel to rutted and back again. Frankly, the Acadia did well with the unimproved road.

However, I had a little less sure footing. Early in the drive, we stopped to take some photos, and I climbed atop a little knoll to grab some images. When I came back down, the rocks shifted, and I tumbled pretty well down the hill. The good news was that I tucked the camera (and my noggin), and rolled pretty well into a three point landing — my left hand, my right knee and my right hip. 🙂 Nothing bad, but some pretty good bumps and bruises. I’ll survive.

Once we were done with Valley of the Gods, we zipped down to Mexican Hat for a little lunch, before heading up the road to Natural Bridges National Monument. To get there, we had to travel across Moki Dugway, which is a crazy unpaved road with tremendous switchbacks, no railing and terrific views. Remember those clouds I mentioned earlier? As we started up the road, the clouds began to produce a little bit of rain, and after turning a corner, we saw a tremendous vista with a wonderful rainbow! It was absolutely stunning. We found a place to pull over, and snapped quite a few images. Way cool.

When we got to the top of the hill, we started getting into colder weather, and some rain from the clouds we’d spotted from down in the valley. And then the snow came. Yep, snow. In fact, a snowstorm. The flakes were huge, and coming down with a vengeance. It snowed on us for about 45 minutes, right up to the entrance to Natural Bridges NM.

Natural Bridges was great, and definitely out of the way. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were the only people there today. We got our parks passport stamped, and took the nine mile drive through the park. Nice drive, and the bridges were nice to see from the overlooks. In theory, we coulda hiked down to some of them, but with me having already put myself down a hill today, I figured I didn’t need to tempt fate.

From the park, we headed toward Blanding. This was pretty much a big ol’ downhill drive, leading to the base of Comb Ridge. Comb Ridge must run dozens of miles, and was catching the sun just right. We found a place to stop at the base of the ridge, and shot down the length of it. With the fading sunlight, it was simply amazing.

By the time we got back to Bluff, we’d been on the road for almost seven hours, and some of the best photography and weirdest weather I’ve seen in quite some time!

Photoblog, Project 365

Project 365 : Lonely Tree

This morning, we had a light snowfall in Da Lou. As if by telepathy, Casey and I both brought our kits to work, and decided to go looking for something to photograph during lunch. Our travels took us to the Katy Trail parking area at Matson. From here, you can look across a vast expanse of farmers’ fields, leading all the way to the bluffs at the river. I’ve photographed this area before, but never in the snow.

The lone tree in this field always fascinates me. When the fields are planted with crops, it seems like a guardian for the new growth. Today, it struck me as a sentinel, warning against entry to the acreage. It’s a very cool tree.

I made this series of images with my Canon 7D and 24-105/4L lens, brought them into Photomatix HDR, shuffled the final image through Nik Viveza and Lightroom, and brought it straight to you. 🙂