Our flight back to the UK from DC arrived early in the morning. I was sitting by the window and looking at the clouds. Nancy looked over and asked if they were storm clouds since they had a similar shape. Initially I thought they were too small, but the shape was right. It turns out, she was spot on. They were storm clouds and they were large – just a long way away. In fact, they were over northern France. As soon as we landed, I looked at the weather radar, and the image below shows just what the residents of that area were experiencing. Amazing to realise just how far you can see when flying.
I have had a couple of work trips that took me to LA in the recent past (how recent may depend on when this gets posted), and the weather has not been great for either of them. The second one coincided with some pretty horrendous weather for the region and our approach to LAX was a pretty bumpy one. We actually landed from the ocean side which is pretty unusual for LAX. The crew prepared the cabin for landing early and I decided the view of the cloud tops from the storm were worthy of video rather than stills. Here is the resulting video of our approach.
I may be stuck in the house during work hours but the view out of the window doesn’t have to be totally ignored. We have had a bunch of changeable weather recently and I have been shooting time lapses of the clouds. The M6 works well for this but I have been using my fisheye lens on the M adaptor to get a wide view of what is going on out there. It has proved to be interesting as a review the footage later. Some of the skies have lots of activity while others don’t.
Sometimes we get the winds pulling the clouds across the sky but the overcast is thick and the lack of heat on the ground means that the clouds are pretty stable. On other days we get almost constant development and dissipation of the clouds. We are on a hill so we can get quite localized development around us. Sometimes you have lower level clouds going one way and higher level clouds heading somewhere else.
I put together a video that includes a variety of clips from these time lapses to show how different things can be on different days (or even at different times of the same day!).
Living in the Midwest provided plenty of stormy weather days. The way in which the storms could brew up on warm afternoons was really impressive. I have always loved lightning and sometimes we got so much of it, you would stop paying attention. One afternoon, there was a storm forecast to roll across the city. I decided to head out to the planetarium since it has a great view of the city and I was hoping for lightning behind the skyline or maybe even on some of the high buildings. I am not sure whether it is a thing but it seemed like the lightning would be more prevalent at the leading and trailing edges of the storm so I was hoping to get shots before the rain made it no fun to be outside.
Things didn’t work out quite as planned and there wasn’t the lightning I was hoping for. However, I did get some amazing cloud formations rolling across the city. Watching this come towards me, it was hard to recognize that this wasn’t some CGI on a movie but was actually heading my way. It looked amazing. It wasn’t long before I retreated to the car once the rain showed up.
On another occasion, I was flying in to Midway. As we made the turn back towards the city after flying out over Lake Michigan, a really intense storm cell was sitting north of the city. It came into view as we turned and I videoed it with my phone. It was another beast of a storm, and it was probably rather damp underneath it.
Storms and rain have been a feature of the fall of 2021 in the Pacific Northwest. I was out with a buddy riding up the Centennial Trail in Snohomish County. Part of the trail, north of Arlington, takes you across an old rail bridge over the Stillaguamish River. The north and south forks of the river come together at this location and the combined river heads under the bridge and off towards Puget Sound.
The rivers were in flood and the amount of debris built up against the bridge was indicative of just how much damage the rivers had done on the local area. With two strong flows of water, the area where they came together was swirling with some violence. Whirlpools were popping up and heading downstream. Below the bridge, you could see upswellings of water from the lower levels and it looked like the sort of thing that would be very dangerous to find yourself in. The video I shot doesn’t really do it justice but you might get some sort of impression of how active it was.
My trip to get the G600 on a rainy Saturday meant a little time to shoot some of the other arrivals. The conditions were incredibly variable. It was hammering down at some points and then sunny for a little while before raining again. I shot a few jets twice as they got to the threshold before going around and having a second go at it. The Alaska Cargo 737-700BCF was a lot better the second time.
One of the jets broke off the approach before it even got too close. Looks like the crews were earning their checks that day. As an aside, I had a tree fall a short distance from me while I was shooting these arrivals. There was a loud cracking noise and then the tree gently fell to the ground. First time I have seen that.
It seems like we get one big snow storm a year where we live. It might not last long (although it has once) but it can give us a decent dump of snow. This year was the same thing. We got about a foot of snow. The weather warmed up soon afterwards but for a couple of days, we had lots of snow. I took a walk around to see what it was like. Quite a slow walk given how deep the snow was in places. Here are some shots from that weekend. I also took some video while I was out so the video clip is below too. The best bit was the guy with the ATV pulling a bunch of people around on sleds! They looked like they were having a blast.
The day was fast running out and I was thinking about heading for home but one of the two 777X test aircraft out showed signs of heading home to BFI so I figured I would wait around for it. It looked like it would get back before the end of the light with a bit of margin so I decided it was good to wait. I have not shot a 777 landing from this location so wanted to get the shot.
However, while the time was looking good compared to sunset, it was not looking so good when thinking of the weather. There were some dark and stormy clouds off to the southwest and they seemed to be getting closer. As the 777X got to the city, I figured a coat was in order since it looked like the rain might arrive first.
Indeed it did and this brought the light levels way down. As it came down the approach, it was shrouded in rain and made for a less than distinct shape to shoot. Certainly not what I had been hoping for. However, why wait all that time and not take the shots. It touched down in the heavy rain but at least the reduced distance meant things weren’t as obscured. It rolled out and turned off the runway but I decided I was already done and headed to the car and dry warmth.
One damp weekend day, I went to Kenmore to visit the camera store. After browsing in there for a while, I headed down to Log Boom Park just to take a look at the Lake. A storm shower had just passed through so I decided to try my luck in staying dry. As I walked down to the water, my gamble did not pay off and it started to rain again. However, I was able to stay out of the worst of it and take a couple of shots across the lake. The clouds near us were really menacing but there was clearer sky in the distance. Quite a range of exposures to accommodate.
It’s been a while since my last visit to our friends in Kansas. I need to get back and see them soon. Our first visit there was a dramatic one. We had gone to the movies to see War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise. At the beginning of that, there is a scene of what looks like lightning striking but it repeatedly hits the same place. In the film, that is noted as being unnatural. As we left the theater and drove home, a storm started raging around us. The lightning was striking frequently and seemed to be in the same places. Uh oh!
We got home and stayed inside as the storm reached its peak. I have always loved thunderstorms and this one was outstanding. I watched the lightning striking around us constantly. I decided to take some pictures. Photographing lightning is normally tricky to do. If it is dark, you can go for long exposures and hope to get the lightning in some of the shots. If you have a lightning trigger, you can let it do the work. In this case, you didn’t need either. I just shot out of the window and the chances were that there would be some lightning in the shot. It was crazy. Here are a couple of shots looking out of a bedroom window!
Our flight back to the UK from DC arrived early in the morning. I was sitting by the window and looking at the clouds. Nancy looked over and asked if they were storm clouds since they had a similar shape. Initially I thought they were too small, but the shape was right. It turns out, she was spot on. They were storm clouds and they were large – just a long way away. In fact, they were over northern France. As soon as we landed, I looked at the weather radar, and the image below shows just what the residents of that area were experiencing. Amazing to realise just how far you can see when flying.
