Thaw: Snow is pretty, but stoppit.

So, we've had worse winters here in the DC area (I'm looking at you, 2010), but few that dragged on quite as long as this one has.  This is surely true across at least two-thirds of the U.S., this year.  Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Baseball starts in two weeks.  SPRING officially begins in about three days!  And Winter had the audacity, the sheer rudeness, to dump nine or ten inches of SNOW on us, this morning.  It's not okay!

So.

Here are a few photos from warmer times and climes, a balm against the icy Thing That Wouldn't Leave...

Rehoboth Beach, DE - 1997

Rehoboth Again - 2001

Pensacola, FL - 2011

One More Rehoboth - 2001

Kill Devil Hills, NC - 2010

Lancaster, VA - 2010

Key West, FL - 1991

Islamorada, FL - 2000

Ft. Jefferson - Dry Tortugas, FL - 2000 - Photo by [Maris]

Gonna Need a Bigger Boat - Barbados - 1993

Sapphire Bay, St. Thomas, USVI - 1995

There.  All better.  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to have some new material for this happy little place, like, soon...

Pensacola Light At Dusk

 October 2011.  Gulfapalooza continues.  We got to the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida with about an hour left before closing time at the lighthouse grounds.  The light was perfect.  Above, the tower from the west side.

 Cupola!  Tall lighthouses can be tricky. Get too far away - your view will be obstructed, while staying too close will result in a severe upward angle.  Pensacola Lighthouse is very tall.

 

 Clear shot of the cupola, with a bit of the massive Fresnel lens visible.  So.  Tall.

 The beach is awesome, here.  You can't just shoot the lighthouse and leave without going down to the water.

 The tower in the waning light, shot from the beach.

 Tiny bird footprints in rippled sand.

 One last look at the tower.

Gulls!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sometimes Skies Do This And Seas Do That

So, it's monsooning ridiculously hard in Maryland, tonight - might even change to snow before it's over. Normally, I head straight for my Keys or St. Thomas pics or some such warming images. Tonight, for some reason, I'm into the doom and gloom and howling wind. The sun is supposedly coming back tomorrow, anyway. The skies and seas in this post were photographed from the balcony of our favorite motel in Kill Devil Hills, NC in 2007.

See spray? I know - so do I!

Cormorants on the wing. It was really, really dark.

Then this happened. Serious coastal rain.

Gull. Yup.

Pelicans!

Wait - is that a patch of blue?

Just enough of a break to allow for a nice sunset over the Albemarle Sound.

The following morning's sunrise wasn't perfect, but I included it here because of the sheer novelty of having been awake to shoot it. Mornings are not my thing.

But this is. Early sunshine on a churning Atlantic. Looks like something else entirely.

Back soon! :)

Of Gathering Gulls And Stormy Skies - OBX '07 Continues

Okay. Where were we? Ah yes - making our way back up the Outer Banks of North Carolina in October of 2007. We had just missed the 3:00 ferry from Cedar Island to Ocracoke, and had almost three hours to kill before the next one. There's nothing but a ferry terminal at this end of Cedar Island, so this turned out to be the most peaceful respite on the whole trip.

Keep an eye on the big seagull. It's happy hour on the sandbar and he's the host.

You have to get there early to get a good spot on the bar of sand.

"Okay guys - do what I do..."

"Free sand crab appetizers until 6:00! Woohoo!"

I like ripples. Sue me.

Looking across the harbor from our room at the Anchorage Inn: Ocracoke Lighthouse.

It had stormed ferociously the night before, and the system still lingered not far offshore as we drove NC Route 12 from town to the next ferry at the north end of Ocracoke.

Serious weather.

So, [Maris] and I are not fans of gloomy weather, and we had to talk ourselves into stopping again to shoot lighthouses under threatening skies. I'm glad we did. This kind of weather is one of the major reasons lighthouses were built. This is Hatteras Light, stoic against the gathering darkness.

And here's Bodie Island Light, being rained on - hard.

Thanks for stopping by. There's still more to come, including a recently-completed excursion to the Gulf Coast.

Ahead, In The Clouds

Clouds. With the right lens and a lot of patience (and luck), they can do some beautiful things. That's why my head can so frequently be found among them. The wind shear at the top of the formation above, shot in Kill Devil Hills, NC in 2010, makes it look like a thin veil. Or something.

Right there. Fly through that!

Storm-watching from the comfort and safety of one's balcony at the beach - a nice way to spend a lazy afternoon on vacation.

Whoosh.

Gull adrift in the downdraft at the edge of a cloudburst.

Closer to home - much closer - I shot these frames of a thunderhead roiling and rolling to the north of Germantown, MD in May of 2011. It was different every time I looked up.

"If you'll look out the right side of the aircraft, you won't see the intense storm we're narrowly avoiding."

Mashed potato clouds!

Faces in the crowd.

You missed us this time, Nature. Nice show, though.

Ciao for now!