M.T.'s weather pictures

M.T. Cranium

I have a few weather related pictures that you might enjoy.

These were taken in August 2007 on a short vacation that involved a bit of part-time storm chasing, the storms that we actually intercepted were fairly ordinary rather than severe, and over southern Alberta east of the Rockies. The first and last picture in this set are taken in the Rockies, on the way there in the Rogers Pass, and the last one on the way back to Vancouver, in the Crowsnest Pass.

The second picture that has the odd pyramid-shaped hill is taken in the "badlands" area of Alberta at the beginning of a storm, and the hill is actually a natural landform not a pyramid.

The third picture is a marginally severe hailstorm that we intercepted the next day, and which was dropping heavy rain and small hail with wind gusts to about 45 mph. By Alberta standards this is not very dramatic but anyway, this is what a borderline severe storm looks like from the outside, so to speak, taken a few minutes after intercept, as it drifted away to our east. Then a few minutes later, I got the fourth picture of some odd-shaped cumulus clouds that were trying to create a small funnel cloud but never quite managed to get much going. We did see some little curls and mini-funnels before this cloud blew away from our path.

In the last picture you get a pretty good sense of how the cumulus formations spill out of the Rockies and once they get about 20-30 miles down into the high prairies, they can start boiling up into storm clouds. The day we took this picture, about four hours later there was a tornado back to the east of us, and looking at the satellite imagery at home later on, it seemed that these rather harmless looking cumulus clouds were not far from being the seeds for these severe storms downstream.

I'm hoping to do a more organized storm chase one day, perhaps a bit earlier in the season and into the prime territory for severe storms further southeast like South Dakota or Nebraska in June, possibly. But Alberta gets some quite severe storms at times, there have been a couple of F-3 tornadoes that have caused deaths and considerable damage to property in the past thirty years. Central Alberta is better known for hailstorms, the low freezing levels create them on almost a daily basis in July and August if the weather is at all unsettled.

Over on our side of the Rockies, the storms are a lot less intense, except for the odd winter storm that has tornadic wind streaks in it. We only have about 2-3 days a year with thunder along the coast here, but 20-40 days a year in the interior valleys of B.C.

M.T. Cranium

Does this remind you of anywhere in Ireland? Because it was taken in a windstorm on our west coast two years ago.

M.T. Cranium

Here's one that shows a kind of soft evening light we sometimes get around here in the summer, although quite often it's just a glaring blue sky or a low overcast around here in summer ... this is taken near where I live, on Burnaby Mountain which is more like a rather large hill that rises to 350m asl and gives a superb view of the metropolitan area and the nearby larger mountains that rise to 1400m (the north shore mountains).

I don't imagine the Winter Olympics will be a huge TV event in Ireland somehow but if you do watch some in February you will see some of these places as they are event sites for various things, however, the main ski events are located 100 kms north of this area in the Whistler resort ... a picture of that area seen from the far west end of the urban area (and in summer so little snow in evidence) follows the first more local one. The mountains you see are about 50 miles north and rise to 11,000 ft -- and should be covered in lots of snow by February, we hope -- but it has been a rather mild and wet start to the season so far.

Rougies

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Does this remind you of anywhere in Ireland? Because it was taken in a windstorm on our west coast two years ago.

Take away the trees and that could easily pass for somewhere on the west coast of Ireland on a fine summer's day.

Much too habitable looking for our west coast though!

Thanks for the photos

Danno

Lovely photos MTC. The very first one is very like the Alps. Your west coast one is what I think the west coast of Ireland would look like if it were another 300 miles further south - kinda tropical look with the trees.

I was in Kerry County earlier this year and took these... http://www.irelandsweather.com/forum/index.php/topic,488.0.html - scroll down the page to view them.

Trogdor

Great pics there MTC, looks a lovely place:)

Danno wrote: »

Lovely photos MTC. The very first one is very like the Alps.

My thoughts exactly!