Stormy Night...

Today I've spent a bit of time marvelling at the astonishing photographers in my general area of the world. They had a field day depicting the meteorlogical wonders we coastal British Columbians were privy to last night.

We had a doozy of a storm -- the sky began to cloud, and the sun dropped behind as if going to set -- and then all hell broke loose.

At least, I always picture hell as having an orange sky. Am I wrong?


As soon as the she sky took on the weird tinge I ran for my camera. [None of these pictures are retouched in any way...]

You can see there is still a tinge of blue showing through the clouds in this shot.






The last time I had seen a sky that colour was driving up Highway 2 towards Red Deer in Alberta last summer. I was on a book tour with author James McCann. He was driving and I was riding shotgun, and taking pictures of the weird sky. We were going at a good clip (In his misspent youth, James was one of the street racing founders in Winnipeg, after all...) but we couldn't get over how all the big rigs were roaring past us, at speeds of 150 km/h and faster. Wasn't until we got to Red Deer that we found out we'd passed under a tornado, just before it formed a funnel.

That's what you get for listening to loud music instead of the radio...






Anyway, back to last night. The sky rapidly changed from under-ripe tangerine to full-on fire orange. The wind swirled and rain torrented.













It started to hail. This one looked just like a wintergreen lifesaver -- hollow in the centre.


Then suddenly the rain and weird hail stopped. The wind stopped.










I ran out under the umbrella to get this odd shot of a rainbow in an orange sky.










The lightning began. It had been rumbling and flashing in the distance, but it started in earnest. I didn't have a tripod and my camera battery began to fail, but you can see how the sky turned electric blue after each strike. We were getting lightning strikes around us every 2-5 seconds for well over an hour.












The sky stayed this colour until night fell. A strange and beautiful sight. And for two hours after dark, the lightning continued to dance.






When I looked up the radar screen for the weather on-line, it looked to me like Vancouver had missed the worst of the storm. I was thankful for this, because I knew how many people were looking forward to both the Illuminata lantern festival and the fireworks display.

But as you'll see below, I was wrong. The storm did hit Vancouver. But did it spoil the fireworks?
A timelapse view from above the Burrard bridge...



[a tip of the hat to Darren Barefoot and others for the link]

~kc

Edited to add: HERE is the link to my flickr page with a larger selection of images

The Bridge -- Part Two

On Friday, while my dogs were getting their hair cut and my car was getting its brakes de-squeaked, I had an appointment to meet James McCann (to pick up a big stamp for Spring Book Hatching, 2008 and talk about our upcoming Chocolate & Chat Tour) on Granville Island. So I decided to ride my bike.










It was the perfect day for a ride. A bit overcast in the morning -- a bit windy, but not too bad, and then the sun came out for the trip home. A great ride. But it was my first time across the Lions Gate since I rode the Golden Gate last year -- which led to this post.















It was fun to ride across the bridge again. It was actually a four-bridge bike ride for me, as I crossed the Lions Gate twice and the Burrard Bridge twice.


I really enjoyed riding through Stanley Park on the other side, checking out how things have recovered since the big storm.





(Still a ways to go -- say 300 years or so -- until the growth is back to where it was, as you can see...)






I've never felt the same about the Lions Gate since I saw The Bridge. It was interesting to ride across in light of all I have learned about it since seeing the movie. I noticed that there is no protective netting or fencing anywhere on the span, apart from this piece:







where they clearly don't want anything or anyone landing on the railroad tracks below.













But apart from that -- nothing.






I can't find the stats for people who jump off this and other bridges in the Lower Mainland, but I did find an article here in The Province, indicating that the Lions Gate will be equipped sometime this year with crisis phones.

For me, in the end, the bridge was a link to the city, a beautiful ride on a nice day. I wish it was the same for everyone.

~kc