It’s great that one can do all three of these in the winter. Ski in Flagstaff; run and mountain bike in the deserts. We have done all three this winter with the emphasis on running. Here are a collection of photos from this winter.
Bonus photo from last year’s epic winter. Yeah, untracked powder!
In a previous post I wrote how the North American Monsoon (NAM) was very late getting started in July. Fortunately, once started, it resulted in normal precipitation amounts for the month of August. Here are photographs and discussion of some of the events during the month.
Yesterday (01 August) had only scattered thunderstorm activity for much of the day. However, radar indicated a weak convergence boundary near Flagstaff so there was a chance of late afternoon storms developing close by. And so it did happen.
A strong storm was located east of Flagstaff just before and after sunset. As the sun dropped to the horizon the underside of the storm and anvil cloud was lit with golden hour light. This is a panorama of that view. It was taken with a ultra-wide-angle lens in portrait mode with ten individual images that were stitched together.
Beautiful!
The comet is now visible in the evening sky but also remains visible in the morning sky. Evening twilight is bright enough to make it difficult to see the comet without binoculars or long exposures on a camera. That will change quickly as the comet moves higher in the northwestern sky in the coming days and weeks.
Above is an image of the comet in the evening sky. Layers of clouds and moisture threatened to interfere but actually made the photograph more interesting with saturated twilight colors.
This image is a stack of ten images each 4 secs exposure at ISO 1600, ƒ/1.8, and 85mm focal length. The individual images were stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker.
The weather has been fairly typical for late June and early July: warm temperatures, breezy afternoon winds, and mostly clear and sometimes absolutely clear skies.
That will change dramatically over the next few days as the North American Monsoon ramps up across Arizona and the desert southwest. As subtropical moisture begins to move northward we will see a significant increase in cloudiness and thunderstorms. Clear night skies will quickly become a distant memory.
With that in mind, I took advantage of clear skies and did some Milky Way photographs. I decided to try Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument so that I could get some of the volcanic hills and ridges in the image.
Near the horizon is Mars which is becoming very bright in the evening sky—and will reach its peak brightness later in July. The planet Saturn is also visible within the starry mass of the Milky Way.