Tagged With: Rain

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain

It rained off and on yesterday but today it really came down. I don’t know that it’s the heaviest rain we’ve ever had but it was probably right up there. I went out onto the back patio under an umbrella and took a few pictures. When it rains hard, we get these streams across our back yard and between our house and the next door neighbors. That’s good, of course, because it means the water is flowing past the house and not into it. Generally, in heavy rains, it looks about like this. Later in the day it was three or four times that width. So, more than we’ve seen in a long time. Our trash can had a good six inches of water in it. Not to say we got six inches of rain (the trash can isn’t a calibrated rain gauge) but it was a lot, anyway.

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Rain

Rain

Rain

It was a rainy day today, a quiet way to usher in the new year. In spite of the rain, though, we wanted to get outdoors. We went to a small park owned by the Isaak Walton League and walked around their pond and into the woods for a while. There were hooded mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) on the pond and I got a few photos of them, good enough to identify them conclusively but not really that great. One of these days I’ll get a long lens but today is not that day. We also saw a hawk of some kind, which flew away from us in the woods. We’ll probably come back here in the spring or at least when it isn’t raining.

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Lake Wiles

Lake Wiles, Isaak Walton League

Lake Wiles, Isaak Walton League

On the first of January we stopped at this little park owned by the Lake Wiles, Isaak Walton League. We came here again today with Dorothy and walked around the pond again. It was raining both times we visited but I suspect we’ll come again on a nice spring or summer day and it will be a little different. The island in the pond has a sign that says “Lake Wiles”. It’s a pretty place and the trail connects with the Muddy Branch Trail, which goes all the way to the Potomac, apparently.

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Rainstorm

Rainstorm

Rainstorm

I generally enjoy summer storms. I’m glad, of course, that we don’t live in a place with common tornadoes. I wouldn’t be very psyched about those coming through even occasionally. We had one here, actually, back in June of 2013 but as tornadoes go, it wasn’t terribly serious. Quite a few trees down including some that did extensive damage to houses. Anyway, today’s storm was nothing like that. Just heavy rain for a little while and then before too long, a blue sky replaced the clouds. This is the sort of storm I particularly like, with or without a little wind.

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Rainbow, Up Close

Rainbow, Up Close

Rainbow, Up Close

Generally you can only see rainbows when the sun is relatively low in the sky. To reflect and refract such that the arc of the rainbow is 42 degrees from the line from the sun to the observer. So, when the sun is high in the sky, the rainbow will be below the horizon. Generally that means you can’t see the rainbow because there’s not enough rain between you and the background. Sometimes you’ll see a rainbow against a distant mountain, but I think this is the closest I’ve ever seen one. It’s between us and the trees across the street. It wasn’t obvious at first, but after looking for it a little while, it became visible and I got a few pictures before the rain moved on a bit further and it was gone.

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Cathy, Point Louisa

Cathy, Point Louisa

Cathy, Point Louisa

When you decide to go to Juneau, you are making a tacit agreement to deal with rain. Depending on your source, there are between 180 and 235 days of rain per year in Juneau and there are only about 80 days described as ‘sunny’ per year. With the average high temperature in July, the hottest month, being only 64.1° it’s not the place to go to get a tan. That being said, we arrived late in the day on June 17 and didn’t have any rain the entire first week. Today was the first day we had to walk in the rain if we were going to walk. We drove with Brian, Lisa, and the dogs out to Auke Rec and walked to Point Louisa. The tide was out and this picture of Cathy gives you an idea of what the day was like. Actually, it wasn’t raining hard and we had a really good time being out. The tides in Juneau are pretty significant and where we were standing when this photo was taken will be under quite a few feet of water at high tide. The rocks are covered with barnacles and there are quite a few mussels, although not as many as on the rocks around Shaman Island, where we walked to on the 19th.

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