2/11-2/25/12 Fires, rescues, and outhouses!

The title says it all! It was a exciting month with many things to shoot! Throughout the month I have collected a few images of various things that I got to witness around Rapid City and South Dakota.

First up was a wildfire on the 11th. It was only a few acres and started from a few kids playing with matches. It is really dry in South Dakota, as it usually is, and when there is gusty winds (every other day) any fire that starts with available fuels will take off pretty quick. I didn't get there in time to see the flames but arrived on the scene shortly after they got the flames knocked down. They were still putting out hotspots. Here are a few images:


The next week, on the 18th the fire department was practicing water rescues on the ice of Canyon Lake on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I wandered down to the lake and got a few shots from a distance.


There was also the usual critters on the lake (they don't go anywhere no matter how cold it is!):


That same night, the Atmos Department got together for a bonfire. Here are are couple from that night:


A week later, on the 25th Dan D'Amico and I went up to Deadwood for the annual Nemo Outhouse Races. It was another gorgous day in South Dakota!


Well that is about it for now! If you liked this be sure to share it with your friends!

Storm chase season is nearly upon us and we are watching the models closely anxious for our first chase of the year! With spring break next week for SDSMT, we have high hopes for a system mid to late week so we shall see!

Stop by again!

Chip

12/12/11 Rime in the Black Hills

Rime, rime, oh how I have dreamed about you. I always wanted to get macro shots of rime but have never had the opportunity to see it. With a moist, stagnant air mass in place over much of the northern Plains, I finally had the chance to see some. We actually went searching for a high point that put us above the massive layer of fog to get the moon above the clouds but couldn't find a place, it was just to thick. So here are a few pictures of rime that developed on the trees, weeds, and a park bench. The guy gold panning was a interesting foreground as well!



















Hope ya like em! Check back here every once in awhile for new pics! I will probably try to get more rime tomorrow before the pattern shifts and the fog moves out, taking the rime with it, and bringing even colder air. By the way, it was about 15F when I was taking these pictures. I also learned a valuable lesson, steel toe boots=bad idea in that cold of air.

Chip

6-27-10 Local Storms (not really a chase)

Very unusual day as several rounds of storms rolled through, the first the worst (though I missed 'em). Nothing in the way of damage. As the last round began to move through I went out in the backyard and shot a few pictures of its approach. Very unusual lighting as the core was pink from the setting sun backlighting the rain. The complex weakened greatly as it approached because of the stable air this far north from the earlier systems. I got off this panorama of its approach. Sorry 'bout the diagonal lines in the image, I didn't feel like photoshopping them out for hours...


What I was really going for was a lightning shot with the pink sky but it never works out that way. To get any lightning since it was so light out I had to turn the ISO waaaaayyyyyy down and jack up the apature just to get anything. Here is an anvil crawler I got, but my settings were just set too dark.

Of course, this is when the lightning really let up too. Figures. As it approached, there was one that shot down a half mile from me (standing in an open field at that), the first close one and it spooked me because there was only intracloud strokes before. I got off this last shot and moved next to the house. There is an anvil crawler towards the top, but its faint.


When I stationed near the house another went down in the same place as the last close one. Par for the course, there was a darn tree in the way. I really wanted to bring out the stroke with no chance of it whiting out hence why it was so dark. Stroke looks good though, well...the part that didn't get blocked out by the tree anyway!


Chip