"For Display Purposes Only - Do Not Take Internally"
Raleigh, NC - Februrary 2010 (Click to embiggen)
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Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Monday, February 08, 2010
Ruby Tuesday #77: "Red on White"
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Saturday, February 06, 2010
Eighteen Percent Gray #16
"Don't Look Down"
Raleigh, NC - January 2010 (Click to embiggen)
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TTL #19: "Winter Of Content"
"Bent, not Broken"
Raleigh, NC - January 2010 (Click to embiggen)
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Thematic Photographic 86: "Water In Any Form" v.7.0 - A Clean, Well Lighted Space
With the "Water in any Form" theme winding down I figured I'd show you the water that's been on everyone's mind around here lately. I'd thought with all the white around reflecting every little bit of light there was, this would be an easy shot to take. Not so much it turns out. There's a big difference between "bright" and "well lit". Because no matter how bright the reflector is, you still have ot have a light source. Should've waited until the next night I guess.
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Thematic Photographic 86: "Water In Any Form" v.6.0 - Light and Heat and Ice
Back in 2007 during the Drought of the Century we put out rain barrels (which made little sense since ... it didn't rain) to grab the water off the roof when any kind of rain came. You'd be amazed at just how much water you can gather this way -- and fast too. I forget the forumla just now, but on a roof of 1000 square feet I think you can collect 600 gallons form an inch of rain or something like that. Anyway, I remember being a little shocked at the notion that the roof on the house and the roof on the garage could combine to catch close to 2500 gallons of water from a half-inch of rain. I digress. This is one of those rain barrels, equipped with an overflow pipe that drains excess water from the back (Yeahright. In a downpour like we usualy have, this is about as useful as trying to shoot a firehose through a funnel.) During the recent "wintry mix" though (which always sounded more like a partuy snack than a forecast to me) the drain was actually doing its job since the ice in the top had to melt before it could drain. Of course, the ice in the drain had to melt first. But ulitmately the spring thaw will sort it all out.
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Monday, February 01, 2010
My World Tuesday #68: My World In White
"3:00 AM - And still coming down"
Raleigh, NC - January 2010 (Click to embiggen)
"3:00 PM - This shouldn't have happened until tomorrow!"
Raleigh, NC - January 2010 (Click to embiggen)
Snow is a rarity in my world. For the better part of this century (so far) we only saw snow once in every four years in Raleigh (though 25 miles west in Durham it was a different matter). So it looks like we got some, right? Yes and no. There is some snow in this mix, but I only know that because I saw it falling with my own two eyes. And it's neatly sandwiched between two layers of ice, which is they typical form frozen stuff takes when it falls from my sky. the difference between snow and sleet has something to do with the temperature at various places in the atmosphere and what freezes where and when. I'll let the alpha geeks explain that one. What I can explain is the reason for the ice cream sandwich effect. Simply put, the pavement was still above freezing when the snow started. It takes a long time for something as dense as concrete or asphalt to surrender its heat, so normally -- unless it's been below freezing for several days -- the first of the snow to fall will melt on contact, which bleeds more heat energy off from the pavement, and results -- ultimately -- in a thin layer of ice between the snow and the ground. The ice layer on top was simply sleet that fell on top of the snow. That's not nearly as bad as the light freezing rain that fell on top of it back in 1996. That turned things very nasty -- fast. And there's some talk that we'll have a encore performance of this phenomenon this week since daytime highs aren't expected to get terribly far above freezing, and rain/freezing rain is in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. This could get ugly.Not that the weekend was any day at the beach. What you'd expect is for the day after the stuff came down -- when there'd been a cycle of thawing and freezing -- that the sandwich would become more dense and break off in slabs. In this case however, it was built in slabs. The photos in the second panel were taken just a few hours after the precipitation stopped. My brilliant idea was that if I shoveled the
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thematic Photographic 86: "Water In Any Form" v.4.0 - A Rarity For Around Here
"Paging Mr. Damocles. Your Party is Waiting."
Raleigh, NC - January 2000 (Click to embiggen)
Hosted by Written Inc.By now you've probably heard me say that the word "Raleigh" is Cherokee for "It don't never snow here". And the fact is that I'm writing this on Thursday night and it's a balmy 50° outside at almost 11 PM. Word on the street (or the Weather Channel anyway) is, though, that all that's about to change drastically in the next 24 hours. The forecast is calling for snow, sleet and general unpleasantness starting Friday night and continuing through Saturday. With temperatures that threaten to keep it around longer than the usual 24-36 hours it usually lasts on those rare occasions we get any at all. Last time that happened was about this time of year back in 2000. And that is something the folks 'round these parts who were on hand to witness it will be talking about for a generation or two. It's generally referred to as "The Blizzard of 2000" and you may have heard that term on this blog a few times if you've been hanging around here long enough. Now in some parts of the world 22 inches of snow is all in a day's work. But here it was history in the making. And there were some pretty deadly-looking stalactites hanging off my roof for several days. These weren't the deadly ones -- yet. Here they were just starting to form. Before they were done the biggest of them were a good 2 or 3 inches in diameter at the base and 2 feet long. The impending storm isn't predicted to have nearly this kind of impact, but as I recall... neither was this one. Stay tuned. If my power stays on I may be bringing you more of this (almost) live.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Thursday Challenge #57: "Winter"
"For Sandy, Remember These?"
Raleigh, NC - March 2009 (Click to embiggen)
Next Week's Challenge: "Messy"
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Thematic Photographic 84: "White" v.6.0 - Embracing the Cliche
You had to know that snow was going to facotr into this theme somewhere, right? I figured it would be every other entry this week -- across all entrants I mean -- so I almost didn't even run this one. But it's not like we get so very much snow that I can afford to waste the shots. This was the second snow of 2009. I don't recall us getting two snowfalls of any significance since January of 2000 when we had one of 6 or 7 inches that melted by the end of the week just in time for a 22-inch record breaker. This snow was pretty much gone by the day after I took this shot. It comes infrequently and goes quickly here.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Window Views #32: "Quick! Call Ripley's!"
"This is next year's snow in advance I bet"
Raleigh, NC - March 2009 (Click to embiggen)
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Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thematic Photographic 82: "2009 - The Year that Was" v.1.0 - Snow! Twice! With Special Guests, Helga the Amazon She-Hawk and Litle GTO
This week Thematic Photographic takes a look back at 2009 in pictures. If it was important to you, it's important to us. So show us what you saw in the year gone by.These weren't events of national or world importance, they were of photographic significance -- to me anyway.It began in mid January when a once-crippled and rehabilitated female red tailed hawk named Helga was released into the wild at the local riding stable where she was found with a badly broken wing. The Triangle Land Conservancy contacted me about using a couple of my shots form the release in their newsletter, which I thought was pretty cool. they were supposed to send me a couple of copies when it came out, but either they forgot or they didn't use the work after all. Either way I never heard any more from them and I kept forgetting to contact them about it.Yes, Virginia, it does occasionally snow in Raleigh, NC. In Inauguration years. The last time anything frozen fell out of the sky here was the day before the Second Coronation of Bush The Younger. That storm was a metaphor for that election in a way. An innocent looking inch or so of snow because of a freakish temperature pattern turned to a half-inch of sheer ice that paralyzed the entire city. It was as insidious as it was perilous because it didn't appear that it would amount to anything problematic, but before it was over there were tales of motorists spending the night in their cars on the Interstate and children spending the night at their schools because the buses couldn't navigate the snarl.Neither of the snows of 2009 held such peril for us, both of them practically melting before the echoes of "Ain't it pretty" faded. This shot was one I took at about 2:00 AM March 2, from my front porch. I wanted to be sure to document the event in case it was over by the time I got up.Once the snow had melted, the thunder started. On hand at this first of two car shows I shot in 2009 were no fewer than three pristine 1967 vintage Pontiac GTO's. (There may have been more than three, I got there late... as usual.)Update: Apparently TLC has a subscription to my feed and nobody realized I hadn't gotten copies of their May-June newsletter (with the photos of Helga) until this post surfaced in someone's reader. So there are two copies on the way now. The power of G**gle in evidence again, eh?
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Friday, December 11, 2009
Thematic Photographic 79: "Elsewhere" v.2.0 - And If You Look To The West...
I'll get back to Topsail Island later this week, but today we'll change things up a bit. A little further from home, and in the opposite direction are the Blue Ridge Mountains. This specific piece of said mountains is the "carriage house" at the cone Estate between Boone and Blowing Rock. In my next life perhaps I can be a carriage. 'Cause I could live here.
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thematic Photographic 68: "Temporary" v.1.0 - Special Encore Presentation
"Pictures, Or It Never Happened"
Raleigh, NC - March 2009 (Click to embiggen)
Hosted by Written Inc.Note: Please take a moment to stop by the Written, Inc. and visit this post. And pay your respects to TP's creator, Carmi, on the sudden loss of his father. Best thoughts for you and your family Carmi.
This week, Thematic Photographic examines the Temporary. The impermanent, ephemeral, transient, the fugacious even the evanescent (yes, that's a real word and not just a band) unstable and volatile. (Don't you just love Thesaurus.com?) And what better place to start than with a meteorological event rarely seen and even more rarely photographed in my part of the world. For a lot of my northern neighbors, this kind of thing probably seems like a permanent condition during the discontent of winter, but 'round these parts it's a rarity. A usually very short-lived rarity in fact. So imagine the surprise and (in some cases) delight when Raleigh got snowed on not once, but twice in the same year! Of course there had to be photos, because after all who'd believe such a story without evidence? This patch of white might have actually held on for 48 hours or more, but only because it's on the north side of the wall you can't see and therefore shaded all day. But rest assured, its reprieve was only temporary. Fleeting even.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thematic Photographic 33: "Surprise" v.2.0 - What the...?
Any time it snows in Raleigh it's a surprise. Seriously. Usually if anything frozen falls from the sky, it takes the form of sleet or freezing rain. And the last time we had any notbale winter precipitation was, oddly enough, the day before the Second Coronation of Bush The Younger. That was a nasty mix of a little snow combined with a freakish sudden plunge in temperature that turned into a half-inch layer of rink smooth ice on all the roadways in this part of the state. In an eerie sort of symmetry, the skies opened up and dropped six inches of snow (the real kind this time) on us for the inauguration of President Obama. And I was really curious how The Tonka Unit would react to it since we'd never had any significant snow in his lifetime. He seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, even after getting a snootful of the stuff from the branches of the hedge between us and the German Shepherd next door.
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