In a previous post, I mentioned working from the car on the waterfront at Mukilteo. It was a lovely sunny day while I was there – at least for the most part. However, I did see a rain squall off in the distance across the water. It didn’t stay too far away for long and, at one point, I was sitting in the car as it was pelted with heavy raindrops. It didn’t last long but the rain, combined with the sun, did result in some rainbows over on the sound. Having recently posted photos of rainbows near the house, I seem to be on a bit of a rainbow theme. Here are some shots I took from the parking lot where I was working.
With the arrival of fall, we get rain showing up here in the Pacific Northwest. However, we can also get some sun breaking through at the end of the day – a bit of a feature of Seattle weather. When you combine rain and sun, it’s time for a rainbow. Twice in recent weeks, I looked outside the house late in the afternoon and saw impressive rainbows. The first time, I just grabbed some shots with my phone and stitched them together afterwards. The second time, I grabbed the main camera and took some better shots although the rainbow might not be quite so impressive.
There is something really cool about a rainbow. I may have seen loads of them over the years but they are still a little exciting!
It doesn’t take long for the weather to change in the Pacific Northwest. One afternoon I got a couple of Cirrus Vision Jets into Boeing Field. The weather was a bit overcast for one of them and then cleared up nicely by the time the second one showed up. The result was a far nicer shot for the second jet than for the first. It is amazing how quickly conditions can change and what a difference it can make to the images.
Work took me to Los Angeles a couple of times early in 2024. On neither occasion did the weather do me many favors. The second trip was very wet but the first was more gloomy than anything else. As I was walking back to the hotel one evening after we had finished our work, I was taken by the way in which the skyscrapers were disappearing into the mist. I only had my phone with me, but it does a decent job in lower light conditions.
We had some pretty stormy weather come through the Seattle area at the end of 2022. When I took a walk through the park at Juanita, I drove past a tree hanging over one lane of the road. Once I got to the park, there were trees down in places. Even the parking lot was showing that it had been breezy with debris scattered across the road surface. They cleaned things up pretty quickly but it had obviously been rather blowy.
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.
Our trip to Cannon Beach got delayed a day by snow on the hills which you have to cross to get to the Oregon coastline. When we did make the crossing, not only were we properly equipped (as shall be seen in another post) but the weather was transformed. The sun was out, and it looked picturesque. The snow was still heavy on the trees and the hillsides while the road was compacted snow. Consequently, it was white everywhere. We were on a major road that would normally be traversed at speed but, due to the traction devices fitted, we were limited to 25mph. It made the crossing pretty protracted, but it did provide ample time to look around and see the scenery – and the occasional vehicle off the road!
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.
A cloudy/rainy day in the Northwest can also coincide with a nicer evening. This can bring some nice dark and stormy backgrounds for shots of planes with good light. It does also mean that the background can have rain falling when the sun is out and that means rainbows. The rain at Everett was a bit localized so we didn’t get a full rainbow. Instead, I could see the two ends at the ground but no rainbow in between. However, the one end was sitting right over Boeing’s ramp and it looked rather appealing. Not sure whether the KC-46 at the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold, though.
In a previous post, I mentioned working from the car on the waterfront at Mukilteo. It was a lovely sunny day while I was there – at least for the most part. However, I did see a rain squall off in the distance across the water. It didn’t stay too far away for long and, at one point, I was sitting in the car as it was pelted with heavy raindrops. It didn’t last long but the rain, combined with the sun, did result in some rainbows over on the sound. Having recently posted photos of rainbows near the house, I seem to be on a bit of a rainbow theme. Here are some shots I took from the parking lot where I was working.
