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Thursday morning, the boss came in to work, and I met him outside, in the break area. His mouth was agape, looking at the sky. The sky was an eerie glowing green, with patches of gold where the sun was almost peeking through the cloud cover. (Bear in mind my color vision - maybe the green wasn't really green, but it's close enough.) Over the course of several minutes, it changed to a pretty solid slate green, without that glow. In my experience, that's one of the many different "snow" skies. I always loved these skies when I was driving, because all the wannabe truck drivers and all the timid 4-wheelers were searching for a warm den to hole up in. Which left the highways open to those of us more serious drivers, who would drive across several states before the wannabe's would venture back outside again.
The weather forecast for Thanksgiving promises lots of snow and/or rain, pretty much everywhere in the US and Canada. It makes me wish I were back out on the road again - except, it's a holiday week. That makes for lots of crashes, and lots of wrecks.
23 photos of truly beautiful nature
Eric Meola became interested in storms during a 1977 road trip across Nevada to photograph an album cover for the musician Bruce Springsteen.
While driving in the desert they encountered a violent storm, and Springsteen wrote a song about the experience called “The Promised Land”, saying later of those photographs: “Eric caught some great pictures but what he really captured was something in the sky and in the lay of the land that deeply revealed the grandeur and character of the country.”
Meola was transfixed as well by the display of nature’s fury, stating: “I always wanted to go back to that day when we drove up on a hilltop and watched as lightning revealed the valley floor.”
He began to photograph the tornadic storms of the Great Plains – the area in America’s heartland. Driving through the area known as Tornado Alley – from the Rio Grande in southern Texas, north to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan – he photographed a forbidding landscape where atmospheric instability collides with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and spectacular cumulonimbus clouds form at twilight.
Over a period of several years he documented a landscape of elemental forces, where immense storms percolate miles above the ground, rotating with energy until tornadoes spin on the horizon.
He discovered a country of haunting beauty where the wail of coyotes and the glow of constellations fill the prairie’s void with simple graces.
“This book extends that narrative and reaches something profound,” says Bruce Springsteen of these new photographs.
I suppose I could write my own book. The night I sat on top of the mountain above Las Cruces, and watched a violent thunderstorm sweep in from the desert, envelope the town below, then move on toward El Paso, and not a single drop of rain landed on my truck. Or racing a blizzard out of the Yakima Valley, to Kansas City, where the blizzard smashed into a major rain storm that had developed over San Diego. Random photos of hurricanes crashing ashore.
Major weather events have always excited me - they get the heart pumping, and make me want to get out in it.
If you're traveling this week, take a little time, and admire the weather. Maybe you can find a place to get some great photos. Don't be one of the miserable drudges, cursing Mother Nature for ruining your holiday. Look up, and admire the beauty. Look around you, get some photos of vegetation bowing to the forces of nature.
There seems to be lots of opportunity for you to play Storm Chaser!!
https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/2019-11-22-thanksgiving-weather-forecast-travel-2019
Me? I'm going to do what is expected of me. Sit at home, and let the kids come to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @08:30AM (1 child)
> racing a blizzard out of the Yakima Valley, to Kansas City
No such luck here, I was in LA and I swear there was a snow/hail storm that left a couple of inches on the ground in Huntington Beach (melted within an hour or two). Left for the east coast the next morning and was in rain solid for 3 days. In the desert east of LA, I ran at 100 mph with a gold Merc AMG, it seemed awfully easy to keep up with them...until I stopped at a rest area, opened the door and the tail wind nearly took the door off the hinges (about 40 mph steady wind). Further along the car dropped a cylinder--parked at gas pumps (under the big awning) and used paper towel to dry out the inside of the distributor cap. In Ohio I latched onto a small group of GM cars with manufacturer plates, out for road testing. About six of them in convoy, slowing down in lockstep with the leader before every overpass (where I guess they expected radar or a cop behind the embankment?) and then back to high speed. Along about Cleveland the sun finally popped out.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 24 2019, @09:24AM
Oh, those tail winds. I'll never forget driving north on I-5, and watching the tumble weeds passing me up! I suppose there was some event in Sacramento that those weeds didn't want to miss. But, they were driving too fast for conditions. Now and then they would pile up, and bits and pieces would go flying.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @09:15AM (3 children)
OK, Boomer!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:04PM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @04:25PM
Boomer / Snowflake -- I like it!
Here is a story behind another pair of "opposites" -- Ghetto / Suburb:
Our dorm was old and pleasantly hackable. Originally an apartment building, one summer the U renovated it. While nice and new looking when we returned that fall, we quickly noticed that the reno reduced floor space, swapped nice old tubs for cheezy shower stalls, shrunk the kitchens in each suite, etc. That fall, a drunk in the quad bemoaned loudly that our familiar ghetto had been turned into a suburb. Forever after, if I shout Ghetto! in a crowd, and a fellow resident is within earshot, I will get back an equally forceful Suburb! The U was on the east coast, but this worked once at a Grateful Dead concert in the Bay Area!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @04:28PM
It will happen after you boomers cause nuclear winter. Very still, very silent.
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Monday November 25 2019, @01:45PM
Last month I was headed home on I-40, leaving Amarillo (westbound) at 6am. There had been freezing rain overnight, and the roads were slick, but the interstate was passable, thanks to the truck traffic. I poked along about 50 in the right lane, which felt about right. There was a little drizzle still coming down, but where the road was clear, it was staying clear.
Shortly after sunup, I started getting passed by semis. The road wasn’t any better, and many bridges were still icy. Sure enough, I lost count at over a dozen rigs in the ditch, sitting on either their roofs or sides, all before hitting the NM border. Almost all the wrecked rigs were ones that had passed me, and most had NC, GA, LA, FL plates. Maybe a CA or two in the mix.
Mostly I was disappointed. It was only a few years ago that I drove home from SLC headed east on I-80, poking along with the semis in a snowstorm, and watched cars passing us, then spinning into the median. The right lane was completely clear, but the left had six inches of slush. Ahh, those were the days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @06:00PM
For true patriots like Tucker Carlson who publicly declare they support Russia over Ukraine.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday November 29 2019, @02:15AM
Thank you for this wonderful appreciation of weather.
-- hendrik