Monday, October 22, 2007

Records have been falling

According to the local newspaper the endless days of rain and leaden skies we have just endured washed out a 107 year old record. The total amount of rain broke the previous record for the 3 month period of August, September and October set in 1900.

The paper also said that the climatological observatory at the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus reported that the first 16 days of October were the cloudiest stretch for that time of year in the 45 years the observatory has been measuring solar radiation, measuring less than three-quarters of average.

So yes, it has been pretty rainy and quite dreary this month.

But today was very nice indeed. It was cool, very Octoberish, a high of about 52. But the sun was out and it was glorious.

It was so nice that it ended up making my ride a bit shorter than I intended. The fabulous light conditions made me stop 3 times for photos. The delays meant that I barely made it home before dark.

Here is Garden Avenue just east of Lexington providing proof that at least some of the trees in town are going through leaf color changes.I figured at this point that I had successfully completed my mission of obtaining a photo and continued along on my ride.

But when I turned off Hamline onto whatever that street is along the west side of Lake Josephine I came upon these bushes. It didn't come out quite as stunning as it was in person but I think you can get the idea. The sun filtering through the bushes, highlighting some leaves, leaving others in the shade created a very nice effect.But by now I was too far from home and had to ride hard towards the barn. The dark falls precipitously at this time of year, virtually without twilight. One minute it is still daytime and almost without warning it is suddenly dark. Really dark.

This is over the corn field along Roselawn, less than a mile from home (but with two miles more to ride). I was hoping to catch more of the clouds but with lighting conditions being what they were I am just glad that there was enough light to capture an image.As is probably pretty obvious, it was getting to be too dark to be out on a bicycle.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice photos and the trilogy makes it very clear how the darkness descends rapidly these days. Unfortunately, I noticed as I was correcting papers by the light of the sliding glass doors instead of riding a bike.
Cheap wire hangers are evil. (Ask Wireless.)
BB

Jimi said...

It was a beautiful day, and it's expected to be followed by a couple more even nicer. There seems to be an up side to global warming. TT

Anonymous said...

A very nice progression of photos. If you're out that dark, I hope you have a blinking light (or two) on your bike so you're more likely to be seen. I am truly horrified by your stretch of horrible weather. Even TOPWLH has commented on how 'those poor people are getting hit again' with rain.