Tag: Clouds

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Watching the weather

The day begins with coffee, Weather Underground, and the crossword. It’s important to know what’s happening outside as you plan the day and week ahead. The high desert  has great vistas whose beauty is in the sky and clouds.

This particular morning there was a notice of thunderstorms on the forecast app. Always on the look out for weather picture opportunities, this storm was scheduled for late afternoon and seemed too good to pass up.

Deciding to document the storm we head east toward the Fort Rock area. This part of the high desert has a great expanse of sky. The plan was to get ahead of the storm and be set up to catch the action.

We opt for the Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge, offering a perfect location, just off Highway 31 near the the town of Summer Lake and to the north end of the town’s namesake.

This put us exactly where we hoped to be…surrounded by storm clouds. Thunder never materialized and for the most part we avoided rain and hail, all the time capturing images of the three or four different storm cells pushing up against the mountains to the east and west of us.

As icing on the cake, migratory birds were paddling around in the water ways. I guess the only down side were black clouds of mosquitoes. Even then the storm’s wind helped disperse the pests.

Finally, on the way back home and closer to Fort Rock, we managed to catch a tremendous sunset. A great ending to a day of weather watching (check out newest photo essay for more images of the storm).

 

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In search of a sunrise

Since moving to Central Oregon we’ve noticed there is an abundance of sky. The Cascade range is now to the west and the high desert’s sage brushed plains stretch out to the east. The weather moves from the southwest to the northeast. Unlike the rainy Willamette valley, fronts break free of the peaks and sprint out across the sage and juniper dotted landscape.

 

As winter takes over, trail and hiking options narrow. The camper is winterized and while there is winter fishing, most of our excursions are planned around photo ops. This week JQ was determined to find a good spot to shoot a sunrise. What does that mean?  We are going location scouting. The actual shoot will need careful weather related planning.

Scouting still requires early morning drives. But we are pushing out to the east for an obstruction free, or relatively obstruction free point to capture that Quinacridone Red moment. That moment just before the sun pushes over the eastern edge of the earth. The key here is obstruction free because as it turns out the barren landscapes of Oregon’s high desert are dotted with ugly transmission lines, polebarns, and assorted manmade intrusions to the perfect sunrise.

The first scouting was on Highway 20 about 18 miles east of Bend at the Badlands Wilderness area. Ancient juniper trees, jutting rock formations, and sandy trails are a great hiking spot and while there are some interesting image capture possibilities, it’s not perfect.

Next day and again a pre-dawn drive…this time on Highway 31 toward Silver Lake and the Christmas Valley. Where Badlands’ obstructions were trees and lack of elevation, this area proved difficult to find a space without gigantic hay barns or ugly transmission lines.  But there was a much more diverse cloud cover to offer interesting textures to the skyline.

In the end, we’ve got a couple of possibilities and now have to start watching the weather report for ideal conditions. As usual, we’ll share those travels here as well.