The Clouds of Spring

May and June are months where we see a lot of clouds. Sometimes, it's just the unending "May Gray," or "June Gloom." More often, we have cloudy mornings with "sun breaks" in the afternoon. When there are sun breaks, there are often fluffy/puffy cloudscapes, illuminated by the sun. Here is a sampling:

Spring clouds can also be dramatic, especially at sunset.

Snow in Spring

It seems like much of the Midwest and East Coast has suffered through a lot of snow since the calendar turned over to spring. Here in Seattle, that has not been the case. With the exception of three warm and sunny days last week, it's been rain, rain, rain for almost the whole past month.

Despite the fact that rain is the most common form of springtime precipitation here, spring snow has been known to occur.

The most recent instance was this year, on March 23rd. The morning started out very cold, the sky was heavy with gray clouds, and for a couple of hours this happened:

In 2013, a snow squall blew through on March 22nd, two days after the spring equinox.

Those poor daffodils!

But the latest spring snow, by far, was in 2008, on April 18th:

The storm struck at dusk, and the rhododendron outside my front door—and the street beyond—was covered in that cold, white stuff.

Fortunately, there are less than 24 hours left in the month of April, so I think we are safe from any more spring snow this year. At least, I hope so...

Weather from the Air

One of the best places to observe the weather is from an airplane. Last month, I was able to photograph some spectacular land- and cityscapes from the air, on a flight from Detroit to Seattle. Two of these photos show the effects of the winter weather, as well as the geographical features of the landscape. The third photo provides a peek through the clouds at the city of Seattle below.

Blue Horizon: somewhere over eastern North Dakota

Relief Map: a river and the surrounding rough terrain, somewhere over Montana  

Beneath the Clouds: Downtown Seattle and Elliott Bay

Weather Photography in January: Cold Seat and Golden Rays

Welcome to the first of my (I hope monthly) weather photography posts for this year.

No, this is not Seattle. I took this photo at a rest stop on the road to Duluth for the annual Knitajourney retreat. It was cold, snowing, and the roads were terrible, but we made a quick stop and I took this photo out the window. While the view was quiet and beautiful, I wouldn't want to sit on that bench!

This isn't Seattle, either. It is a lot closer to home, however. Last week, we went with friends to the Washington coast for two days at Pacific Beach. I was lucky to catch the last rays of the sun as it disappeared behind the clouds. Spectacular!

A Word and Weather

January is almost over, and here I am, writing my first post of the not-so-new year. No excuses; I just didn't get around to it until now.

In previous years, I've started the year with a list of goals for the year, many of which were forgotten almost as soon as I wrote them. Last year, I said I wasn't setting goals for the year, other than to blog more than the previous year. and I did manage to follow through on that, writing 19 posts, compared to 14 in 2016.

This year, while I certainly would like to increase the number of blog posts again, I am not going to promise that it will happen. I'm also not going to come up with a list of goals, either. Instead, I have come up with a word that I want to represent my year, and that word is Adventure. So what do I mean when I say adventure? It is a broad enough word that it can cover a lot of different areas of my life—adventure in knitting, photography, travel, reading, hiking, and so on. I'm not sure how the word adventure will play out in my life this year, but not knowing is an adventure in itself.

There is one knitting adventure that should start happening later this winter:

That's a canvas bag crammed full of six shawl projects, hidden in identical brown paper bags. When I finish my current shawl project—sometime in February, I hope—I'll pick one of these bags, discover which yarn and pattern are inside, and cast on immediately. I got the idea for this from the many knitters that have brown-bagged their sock projects to randomly pick throughout the year. While you probably know by now that I love knitting socks, I chose shawls because I have so many shawls that are already queued and linked to stash yarns, and I'd like to get some of them actually knitted. Stay tuned to the blog this year to watch it happen.

The other year-long project that I want to focus on relates to my photography. This past year, I blogged about a photo each month, either a favorite photo or one that represented an activity from that month that I wanted to highlight. I enjoy doing a monthly photo post, but this year, I want to focus on photographs depicting the weather. My father was a meteorologist, and he brought me up to appreciate all kinds of weather phenomena. In addition, I often use my camera to document the very changeable weather conditions that we experience here in Seattle, as well as weather events that I observe during my travels. If you are a weather geek like me, you know this will be fun!

Goodbye, Winter

Most people who don't live in Seattle think that winter here consists only of rain, rain and more rain. We do get a lot of rain during the winter, but in most winters much of that rain happens in late fall—November and December—and January is often cold, sometimes foggy, sometimes sunny, and yes, sometimes rainy. In most years, by the end of January we are seeing blooming crocuses and signs that daffodils and tulips will soon be popping up. By this point in February we usually see rhododendron buds swelling and some azaleas already in bloom.

This has not been an ordinary winter in Seattle. Yes, we got a lot of rain in late November and December. Yes, it was cold in January. But the big difference was that we also got snow, and not just the usual dusting or an inch or so that was gone in a day, but several inches of the stuff. And these snow events happened more than once, also an unusual phenomenon. 

Because this winter is almost over, I want to document and share with you some of the scenes from my local winter season.

The first snowstorm arrived in mid-December. It briefly added some atmosphere to the holiday season.

There wasn't any snow left for a white Christmas, but we had a dusting of snow on New Year's Eve. This is what my garden looked like on New Year's Day, and because temperatures were well below normal, that snow stayed around for almost all of the following week.

Those early-January temperatures created something else rarely seen: ice on the surface of Lake Washington.

A lot more precipitation arrived in February, but guess what? Some of that precipitation came as snow. The first snowstorm arrived on February 6th, and dumped about three inches into my garden. 

Another surprise snowstorm hit yesterday at dawn, and down came another two-plus inches of very heavy, wet snow. 

I actually love this type of winter, but I have had enough and want it to be over. And, by coincidence, it may be, because look what I spotted on my walk this morning:

Welcome, March! Happy Spring!

Winter in the Pacific Northwest

A lot of people think that here in the Northwest, winter looks like this every day:

I will admit that sometimes winter looks very much like those photos, but this winter we have been treated to much more variety in our weather. Do you want to see? Take a look below:

Obviously, not just a succession of rainy days all winter long. But let's keep it our little secret, shall we?