Posts Tagged ‘clouds’
Changing Skies
It’s been a wild few days of changing skies around here lately. That is rather typical of the kind of weather March would usually bring.
The flakes that fell yesterday were HUGE! The difference from March storms of old is that it stopped snowing before burying us in barely a half of an inch.
At least the wind had stopped blowing. The calm was wonderful.
Only one additional tree toppled over to a 45-degree angle overnight. Maybe an 8 to 10-inch diameter trunk. A scattering of large branches came down, too. When Cyndie returns at the end of the week, I will be able to crank up the chainsaw to do some cleanup lumberjacking on trail seven. [grunt, grunt]
.
.
Glazed Asphalt
The smooth black surface of our driveway is great for melting snow that remains after plowing. It’s not so great when moisture condenses overnight and freezes. We need to get a sign that warns, “Slippery When Glazed!”
Luckily, the warmth visiting our region as the day progressed made that glaze disappear entirely. We lost more snow on Sunday than yesterday but the trend is obvious and feeds itself. Each day we get above freezing will advance the evaporation to greater degrees (pun intended).
On a day over the previous weekend when the clouds weren’t as opaque, I captured this view directly overhead:
A cloud gazers delight. Do you see the dolphin? I’m intrigued by the contrast of shadowed clouds compared to the ones glowing bright white. I wonder what it looked like from the window of an airplane flying close to the same elevation.
Not much sky watching happening when walking on our driveway in the morning hours. Waddling along like penguins are we.
.
.
Conditions Soften
The winter months this season have been about as soft as I’ve experienced in this region compared to all the years my somewhat feeble memory has retained while living in what is described as the upper midwestern United States. The previous week has been the only period of dramatic cold temperatures and that bone-chilling Arctic blast has already begun to release its stinging grip.
The relaxing of the horses’ energy is palpable. They are stoic beasts in the face of the worst weather that nature manages to conjure up. They may display a bit of shortened patience while we stumble around to complete our tasks in minus thirty-degree (F) wind chill, but they stand firm and resolute against the oppressive pressures of extreme cold.
When the temperature climbs back to positive numbers, we can feel the release of tension their bodies have been holding in defense against the elements. That’s when I noticed the same thing was happening to me this morning.
I can breathe without frost forming on my whiskers, bolstered by the knowledge a January thaw is on tap in the days ahead. The only catch with the arrival of above-freezing temps is that any precipitation that might show up at the same time could fall as rain, my absolute least favorite winter condition.
Winter rain just leads to winter ice. Yuck. And the horses agree with me on that assessment.
I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying fancy winter lighting in the sky recently.
Always remember to look straight up in the sky to capture some great views.
I don’t know how to find a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, but it was a treat watching the light play in the wisps of clouds in the sky.
A day or two later, an unexplained streak of cloud (remains of a contrail?) caught my eye because of the fiery refraction of sunlight at the end.
Something tells me the warmer air moving in won’t offer daytime light shows like the icy skies just did.
.
.
Over Cooked
I worked outside in the humid heat yesterday for a little too long. My clothes were saturated with my sweat and my fingers were getting pruney even though I’d long ago ditched the gloves that were too soaked to be any good to me. I knew I was pushing the limits of my stamina but I wanted to finish some mowing with the push mower.
As I made my way to the shop garage to put away the mower, I could tell my muscle response was getting rather sluggish. It was past my dinner time and my body was running on fumes. Even my hearing and vision started to waver a bit as I cleaned up the deck of the mower before slowly making my way back to the house.
Before I could even peel off the soaked clothes that were clinging to my body, I succumbed to a powerful desire to lay down for a few minutes so no muscles needed to do any work at all. The cool tile floor of our sunroom fit the bill nicely. What a relief to immediately rest my entire body.
When I did try to move again, my muscles wanted to cramp. Cyndie brought me an iced electrolyte concoction to drink.
I was cooked. Overcooked. Cyndie offered to serve dinner, which I needed, but I was feeling nauseous and asked for a brief delay before eating. Getting out of my soaked clothes was going to feel good but I wasn’t looking forward to the effort it would require.
The reward for that effort came in the form of a shower. It was weird to enter the shower with hands already pruned and then have the pruning intensify. I wanted to make it short because I was too tired to stand for long but our shower has a spot to sit. My body chose to spend a few seconds seated under the spray whether my mind wanted to or not.
The air conditioning has been on in the house for a couple of days and that soon had me feeling colder than I wanted to be, which is weird after being too hot just 15 minutes earlier.
I started the day using our hedge trimmer to clean up the new growth on the natural green wall along our north loop trail. That tool is my new favorite, for sure. We now have two pathways tunneling beneath the branches of our big willow tree.
We got new blades for the little Stihl hand-trimming chain saw so I put one on and cut down some pine branches that were sagging into the pathway. What a huge difference a sharp chain makes.
The clouds have disrupted our viewing of the first supermoon of the month. Cyndie captured an interesting cloud formation on Wednesday that looked downright tornadic when I viewed it on the small screen of my phone upon receiving it from her in a text.
See what I mean?
Looks like we will be waiting for the blue moon at the end of the month for that eery glow illuminating views out our windows in the middle of the night. Cue the howling coyotes…
.
.
Moon Ablaze
I needed to walk our trash bin down to the road last night, a trek that would normally have been time spent with Delilah. [sad face] The moon has been so bright the last few nights, I was looking forward to seeing if we would get another good viewing. As I crested the hill before the road, there was no moon in sight.
It was too early. The sky to the west was speckled with clouds but I figured the moon would show through enough to see in the east.
By the time I had walked the rest of the way to the road and back to the top of the hill again, I turned to find the first hint of the rising moon. Having caught sight of it just as it appeared on our horizon, I decided to stand and watch the rotation of the Earth bring it higher in our sky.
When the full circle of moonlight was visible, I took a picture of how it looked.
It was as if it was on fire!
.
.
Hiking Afton
A hike in the woods along the scenic St. Croix River is always good for what ails, especially on an uncharacteristically summery day in the second half of October in the greater Twin Cities. Even better, doing it with precious friends and sharing a picnic lunch adds a magical essence of energizing endorphins.
We met Pam and John at Afton State Park early enough in the day that a second layer with long sleeves helped to tide us over until the heat of a summer day settled in. Pam and I first connected on a group trek in the Himalayas in 2009, the one that served as inspiration for me to start this blog. The mixture of terrain in the park and the marvelous conversations yesterday sparked remembrances for both of us of the weeks we shared over a decade ago in Nepal.
Driving to the Minnesota side of the St. Croix river from our house, I witnessed a phenomenon in the sky that was a first for me. High winds had pushed some clouds 90° from flat to straight up. On an otherwise unremarkable-weather morning, such an anomaly in the sky seemed incredibly remarkable to me.
I can only wonder what that would have been like for a small plane if one were in the vicinity.
My drive home included a different kind of excitement in the sky in the form of smoke. Actually, I smelled it before I saw it and the instant impression I had was alarm over the possibility of a brush fire on this hot and windy day with the extremely dry conditions our drought has caused.
I had just come through River Falls and finally spotting the thickness and depth of the smoke served to heighten my level of concern. Then I came upon a bright orange temporary road sign indicating a “prescribed burn” in progress.
“In these conditions?!!” I thought to myself.
Cyndie and I had traveled in separate cars as she had overnight plans with a friend in the Cities and drove west from Afton after our picnic and I returned home to take care of the horses and Delilah.
A short distance after the sign, my anxiousness dropped significantly at the sight of an incredible number of strategically parked vehicles and some big equipment, indicating this was not some short-sighted amateur operation. Still, it seemed to me like the weather conditions would have given them reason to pick another time for such a risky endeavor. I have no idea what the purpose was for the burn at that location.
Enquiring minds would like to know.
Good thing for me the residual endorphins from the good time hiking and picnicking in Afton State Park with John and Pam survived that brief, smoky disruption to my serenity on the drive home.
.
.
Outstretched Arms
As if reaching for a hug or stretching to embrace the world before me, arms wide and heart open, I stand and gaze up toward the sky with lyrics from all my favorite songs strolling around in my increasingly foggy memory bank.
Can it be so hard
To love yourself without thinking
Someone else holds a lower card?
Free to Be, 1977 Bruce Cockburn
.
Holding a sense of wonder has got to be one of the great secrets of living an enlightened life. Hah! Brings to mind the great darts episode of Ted Lasso:
“Be curious, not judgemental.”
In which the main character apparently misattributes the quote to Walt Whitman.
What does the world hold for me today? It’s mostly blue sky now but that’s changed twice already since I woke up a half-hour later than usual this morning. As I was getting Delilah into her harness for her morning stroll through our woods, the sun was shining brightly into our front entrance. I grabbed my sunglasses and off we went into the not-too-cold morning air.
Halfway through the woods on our way around toward the barn to feed the horses, I fumbled to stash my sunglasses in a vest pocket. The sky was filled with clouds.
Now the clouds have disappeared again, about as fast as they had shown up a couple of hours ago.
Last night’s weather forecast for today promised high winds but they haven’t kicked up here yet. I’ve left the barn doors closed in anticipation of avoiding the dusty turmoil that blustery days can kick up in there.
Here’s to being open to whatever insights the universe happens to provide for our further enlightenment on a sunny Sunday with no firm commitments demanding our time or attention.
I’m feeling a certain pull to lay down and stare up at the clouds while listening to a random shuffle of my music library.
Imagine that.
.
.
Nature’s Magnificence
It was a beautifully warm sunny afternoon that found Cyndie and me splashing in the lake to clean duck shit off the inflated floating platform in the swimming area. A thankless task because not long after we leave, the ducks return and make themselves at home again. A price we pay to co-exist with wildlife.
At the time, we had no idea stormy weather might be lurking nearby. As the dinner hour approached, pizza from Coop’s was chosen and I got elected to drive into town to pick up our order. Emerging from the trees onto the road to Hayward, a view of the open sky revealed a most spectacular display of roiling cumulonimbus clouds that were so engaging I struggled to pay appropriate attention to my driving.
While waiting at the bar to pick up our par-baked circle of deliciousness, the two tv screens overhead began to display ominous-looking warnings about a thunderstorm in Sawyer county. Based on what I had just seen in the sky, I wasn’t surprised in the least, but the folks around me who were oblivious to what it looked like outside were caught as unaware as I had been 10-minutes earlier.
It just didn’t feel like a storm-threatening kind of day.
With the pizza box safely stowed on the seat beside me, I checked the radar view on my phone before setting off and saw we were on the backside of this long line of storms that were percolating just to the southeast and moving away from us.
I called Cyndie and suggested she check out the view, knowing her deep appreciation for cloud formations. By the time she was able to see it and take pictures, the clouds had lost some of the initial splendor of the freshly blossoming thunderstorm that I was able to witness, but because we were granted a rear view of the event, it still looked impressive.
As the rotation of the earth moved the sunlight closer to our western horizon, the storm in the distance began to glow and bounce vivid color off the lake for a whole nother visual presentation.
Isn’t nature magnificent?!
.
.
Nature’s Best
Stormy skies can be a scary thing for some people but rainclouds also provide the backdrop for one of nature’s best spectacles. The weather pattern yesterday was a little chaotic with many periodic episodes of rain rolling by amidst hours of otherwise sun-bathed summer scenes.
It was the perfect recipe for a rainbow and that is precisely what we got.
Another highlight of the day involved multiple viewings of videos captured when Joni Mitchell surprised the world by showing up at the Newport Folk Festival. What a triumph at 78 years of age, after her brain aneurysm in 2015.
Joni is another one of nature’s best.
.
.
A Speck
Cyndie has wowed me with another sky pic. I have cropped it to exclude the ground, leaving a spray of thin clouds smeared across the blue with a half-moon all lit up in broad daylight.
But there’s more.
Up near the top there is a speck that she hadn’t noticed at the time. I tried to brush it off my screen.
A high flyer soaring almost out of sight.
For as inconspicuous as it is, I think it disproportionately adds a lot to the image composition. Even though that dark spec barely catches my eye, knowing it is there provides added depth for me.
Or, I’m just thinking too hard. I simply like the image she captured. Down to the last speck.
.
.
Relative Something 