Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category
July 2nd, 2010 | 
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I love thunderstorms. Always have. Since I was little kid, my favourite thing to do in the summer is to sit on the porch in a lawn chair and watch the light show.
Very shortly after I got into photography, I found out how to photograph lightning and I was hooked. Now, I could watch the show and save it for later, too.
Naturally, there are some risks in shooting storms: you generally need to be on high ground for the best view around you. If you think about it, standing on a high-point holding a metal tripod during a thunderstorm might not be the wisest course of action. I’ve never really been one for thinking things through when a great photo is at stake, though.
I will admit to a couple of really dumb things in pursuit of lightning: Read the rest of this entry »
We seem to have bypassed June and gone straight to July here in Eastern Ontario:
At this rate, the asphalt will be melting in August. 
Here’s a good indicator of how early Spring is here. I photographed this Black Swallowtail yesterday afternoon:
According to that page, they don’t normally emerge until mid-late May. We’ve also been very short on rain, which makes me wonder what summer will be like. The last time we had a hot, warm Spring, summer was a dry scorcher. We literally went the entire month of July without rain. Not good. We’ll see.
I’m always amused when events in a small country are able to wreak havoc on the world. Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano is the latest example of this. It’s been spewing ash into the sky since the weekend and that’s made an incredible mess of air travel across much of Europe.
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has a great gallery of pictures taken of and around the eruption here. This one is the standout, though:
We’ve had a terribly grey, cruddy, winter here in Kingston. Cloudy for days and weeks on end. Barely a sprinkle of snow compared to the average. Warm and sloppy when there was snow on the ground and cold and drizzly when it rained. Basically, Vancouver weather. No redeeming qualities. What. So. Ever.
I convinced myself to take advantage of the gorgeous sun out there today and went for a stroll along the lake at lunch. There are signs of early Spring everywhere: the ground is beginning to soften and get muddy and there are rivulets of water everywhere that there’s ice or snow. The sun is beating them to liquid.
Natural ice isn’t a static thing. It moves and flexes as it warms and cools. Sometimes it breaks. Sometimes, the lake will take great piles of it and fling it up on shore. That ice is beginning to melt:
It’s not quite here yet, but Spring is Springing!