Stormy summer weather

Talk about perfect vacation timing! A week and a half ago we were in St. John’s enjoying higher than seasonal temperatures, and this weekend the Maritimes, and of course including St. John’s, is bracing for land fall of the tail end of Hurricane Bill, the first hurricane of the 2009 season. Winds speeds on land are expected to reach 120 km/h and waves could be as tall as 8 meters. Yikes! The worst storm surges are likely to occur Monday on the Avalon peninsula, which is exactly where we spent our holiday.

And Southern Ontario hasn’t got it any better. A tornado ripped through some communities near Toronto last night.

It’s really been the summer of wild weather when you remember that Vancouver had that record heat for a few days in July, and a Winnipeg-style lightning storm a month or so ago.

Being a photography enthusiast, I’m still miffed that I missed out capturing on (digital) film that fantastic sunset just before the lightning storm.

We had gone to see an afternoon movie (“Moon”, it’s great, go see it!) and as we were going down the stairs in Tinseltown I could see that the concrete driving aisles in the parkade were wet. No big whoop, I thought. We didn't bring umbrellas but we’re only driving from the underground parkade straight home to our garage. We’re not going to get wet, which we didn’t.

But.













I missed probably the best photographic opportunity since the snow accumulations of last winter (I took the two photos above at Spanish Banks last summer when smoke from Northern California forest fires drifted into the Vancouver area). The atmosphere just seemed to glow. I imagined this must be what it would be like to travel on the surface of Mars. I could have parked anywhere along Main or Quebec Streets to take photos, but, logically, when one goes to a movie, there’s really not that much point in bringing a still camera. Although if it had been winter and I had been wearing a jacket, I probably would have had the camera stashed in my pocket. Just in case.

Often times you get the best shots in situations where you least expect them, which is exactly what happened on the evening of the spectacular orange, other-worldly sunset that preceded the prairie-style lightning storm.

To end on a positive note, I did get home in plenty of time to grab a lawn chair and sit under the protection of our partially covered deck to watch the phenomenal lightning dance in the Western sky for an hour or so.

I love living here.