Dec. 24th, 2008

alexpgp: (St Jerome a)
It was, as ever, a thrill to watch the first few moments of sunrise today, with the sky hinting of pink and the tops of the mountains catching the first rays of sunlight:

Rocky Mountain sunrise, with Pagosa Peak catching the sun's first rays

I took the photo with the Storm, and aside from rotating it, retouching it a bit to recapture the morning colors, and displaying it resized (375 x 500, down from the original 1490 x 1987), the shot is as I took it. (Note to self: hold the phone horizontally in your left hand when snapping a photo if you want it to upload properly to flickr.)

Another winter storm warning has been issued for our area, effective 6 pm tonight and continuing until 6 pm Friday. The money quote from the National Weather Service's forecast:
A MAJOR WINTER STORM WILL BRING ANOTHER PERIOD OF HEAVY SNOW TO THE AREA STARTING TONIGHT AND CONTINUING THROUGH FRIDAY AFTERNOON. SNOWFALL TOTALS WITH THIS CHRISTMAS STORM ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM 1 TO 2 FEET BY FRIDAY EVENING... WITH UP TO 3 FEET POSSIBLE ABOVE 9000 FEET. IN ADDITION... VERY STRONG SOUTHWEST TO WEST WINDS GUSTING TO OVER 50 MPH WILL CAUSE WIDESPREAD BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW... AND WHITEOUT CONDITIONS AT TIMES.
Talking about whiteouts, the other day, while on my way to and from the store to make some last minute purchases for dinner, I saw three cars stuck in snow off to the side of the road.

I could empathize with the plight of the drivers, because despite the fact that visibility was excellent and there was no wind, I found it a noticeable effort to "see" the road in front of me, as the uniformity of the white stuff on the ground (and the diffuse sunlight) provided no way to distinguish the road from its edges.

That was not the case yesterday, when I took the car down the driveway to test the condition of its surface and create a "trodden path" (should we need to go down the thing again for real, like for a run to the store). When I got down the road, it turned out that there was no place to turn around for the trip back up, as the main road had not been plowed!

As I had no desire to get stuck in 18 inches of snow while vainly attempting to blaze a new path, I had no choice but to follow the trail made by my neighbor in his John Deere, when he had come to plow our driveway. I drove down to his driveway, where I turned around with some difficulty and then set off on my quest back home. I made it, but there were a couple of exciting wheel-spinning moments I could have done without.

The road has been plowed since then, which means I'll have to take a shovel with me on the way out, to dig through the snow berm that's been deposited across the mouth of our driveway.

How did I get off on this tangent?

Hopefully, the weather will not interfere with some kind of singing event in which Huntür is scheduled to participate later this afternoon.

Cheers...
alexpgp: (Liftoff!)
Nicked from LJ friend [livejournal.com profile] james_nicoll.

Earth as seen from the moon, taken by Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968


May the dream stay alive!

Cheers...

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