The last few days have been quite cold in the Midwest. In Kewanee, IL we have bottomed-out as low as -10° degrees (Sunday morning) with wind chill values easily approaching -20° degrees below-zero. It's been much worse however in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest thanks to an arctic high pressure center. It appears that the rest of this month will have below-normal temperatures throughout or at the very least the next couple weeks. With air temperatures below-zero I decided to pull out the annual pot of boiling water. For the photography aspect I used a wide-angle lens and I set the Canon T1i on continuous shooting and let the fun begin. Actually, I positioned the DSLR a tad downwind for most of the shots, but not too close. Ya, a little risky but it worked! The fun quickly ended though as in 15 min the DSLR and camcorder batteries died due to the extreme cold temperatures. They were fully charged beforehand...guess the instruction manual was indeed correct. Anyhow, got some of the shots I was hoping for. I've added some of them as well as some Hoar frost pics I took this past week along with the rare New Year's Eve blue moon. Photos are below:
Hoar frost on some trees in a valley
Picket fence and some of the frost
Some of the crystals deposited overnight just above the surface
A liquid to a gaseous state
Back-lit sun creating my ghostly silhouette...pretty cool!
Fun science experiment during the "off-season"
How to make your own cloud...
Actually you can observe another phase-change as
crystallization seems to be occurring here
Brilliant New Year's Eve blue moon
(how rare you ask?...next time this will occur...2028)
Caught this spectacular shot Saturday night
(wind-farm lights in the foreground)
I've added a short YouTube clip as well (above)
crystallization seems to be occurring here
Here's a couple moon shots I took over the last week below: (Canon 70-300mm telephoto-zoom lens)
(how rare you ask?...next time this will occur...2028)
(wind-farm lights in the foreground)
I've added a short YouTube clip as well (above)
Temperatures will slowly moderate somewhat over the next few days, but still well-below normal with another shot of accumulating snow in the Wednesday-Thursday time-frame. 2010 has surely started off very cold for much of the U.S.
