It’s bigger than a puddle, but not quite big enough to be a flood. Hence, a fluddle, pictured at the back of the George pub in Torrisholme, Morecambe. However the first day of 2015 panned out for you, here in north-west Lancashire, it was very wet.
I have on occasion been known to describe snow as the devil’s mange, but also must admit that the 90 minutes I spent out in it this morning, under clear blue skies, was probably the most beautiful experience of 2014 thus far. These are the moments worth waiting for in life.
Well, it may have been snow. Only I and the nearest meteorologist know for sure. A happy Christmas to one and all, wherever you may be, whatever you may have done.
Actually today was a relatively pleasant day — apart from this 30-minute period in the afternoon. Look in the background — even the Canada goose is taking shelter.
Maybe I’m the only one who can see, in this cloudscape, the figure of a kind of zooming, superhero Cloud Man, streaking across the sky with his blond hair flowing behind him in the wind. But as I can see it, that’s why I took the picture.
Rainbows are a kind of cheap shot, but they usually offer something — you at least know there will be colour, shadow and light all around somewhere. This was taken from inside, after I glimpsed the possibility while drifting off in the post-lunch death slot at the seminar I attended today. There’s a double rainbow visible if you look closely.
Incidentally, this is Alan Turing’s second memorial appearance on the blog after his statue made it back last year.
Wind is the hardest form of weather to capture on camera: this is my best effort at encapsulating what was, really, a very windy day, at least between dawn and about 2pm. The bins couldn’t hack it, they’re all down for the duration.
Joe is on his half-term holiday, so these two days I’m off work doing my part of the child care duties. And I decided to take him somewhere I liked. Why not.
Newspaper editors in London might also like to use this picture as evidence that today was not, despite their headlines, the day that the ‘Killer Storm Stopped Britain’. Or perhaps they were using ‘Britain’ as shorthand for ‘that small part of a decent-sized country which is nearest to London’ — as they so often do?
I’ve only ever seen this a couple of times before — a rainbow, or at least a spectrum, high in the air, nowhere near the ground and with no rain in sight. I guess it must be caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Bad weather on the way perhaps. Let’s hope not: I intend to spend next weekend walking in Norway.
POSTSCRIPT: Have discovered this is something called a ‘circumzenithal arc’. They are not rare as such, but apparently only appear when the sun is at exactly the right angle to ice crystals in high-level clouds, and thus can be seen only in very restricted locations on the ground. So if you do see one, feel privileged – it may well only be visible in a space a few metres around you.
Can something be both colourful and gloomy at the same time? I think this rainbow manages it. I love the way the houses at the end, lit by the early morning sun, glow like little nuggets of gold at the end of the…. whatever, you know what I’m saying.
