Category Archives: Weather

Wow…what a rain!

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The heavy, heavy rain that blew through south Bismarck today was a real eye-opener to the new robins in our yard! I was washing dishes when my 18 month old boy called to me, yelling “bird!” in baby-talk and pointing out the window of the screen door. I toweled off and came over to see what he was so excited about, and found this little guy huddled on our railing. He was fluffing his feathers over and over to get rid of some of that nasty rain. After a very short while (before I could really get the camera set properly) he was gone. He flew away in an unknown direction while I changed out the mostly-dead batteries in my flash unit.

It’s good to know that some of our baby robins survived. Hopefully they’ll grow up quickly and have a happy home here. I’m grateful he didn’t have to endure a hailstorm at this point in his early bird life!

After another storm that completely missed Bismarck

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Yet another storm promising nasty hail, wind, and heavy rain split in two and circumvented the capital city. I kid friends who work at the refinery and the power plant north of Mandan, saying that whatever they put into the atmosphere must be working!

I headed north with my camera and a friend who’s in town for the week, and spotted these cool clouds to the east. They were the type of weird rolling clouds known for hail, but failed to drop any on us. That’s good, actually. One of the clouds to the northwest was casting a shadow on them, as you can see on the left side of the photo. It made for a pretty unique sliver of time, caught on my camera sensor.

It’s hard to do the scene justice with only 500 pixels from left to right, so you can click here for a larger version.

‘Til the Storm Passes By

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I couldn’t help but think of one of my favorite gospel hymns as the clouds rolled past tonight. I was on my way to church when the tornado siren near our house began to blare, so I unloaded the boys and took them back into the house to see what was rolling our way. Thankfully, all the action missed us. Stanton saw three inch hail tonight!

Snow sticks to artificial turf

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I was really excited at the potential of a photograph of the snowy lawn at the state capitol last Saturday. Sadly it was not to be so; the snow wasn’t sticking to the grass as it was some other surfaces, so the white coat wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. While looking for a nice spot overlooking the river, however, I spotted a surface that was quite conducive to a blanket of white: the field at the Bismarck Community Bowl. I’m sure it has to do with the height of natural grass as opposed to the artificial playing surface. Oh well, there will be May snow some other time..despite what the global warming hoaxers want you to believe.

Everyone knows it’s windy

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I heard the forecast and knew it was going to be windy. I didn’t know it was going to be THIS windy! Not only did it make things inconvenient for an outdoor videotaping session today, I also noticed this while driving away from where I was taping.

This power pole is adjacent to the Bismarck Expressway, near Capital RV. The lines held, and the pole seems intact, so it’s just a matter of getting it upright and reinforcing the soft ground. I would not want to be the guy in the bucket truck that had to lean over that thing and attach a tow line to it!

Someone always kisses the lightpost

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Gateway Avenue is the street that goes past Basin Electric on its way from State Street to 19th Street. At the crest of this hill the road curves to the left a little, and it’s off camber as well. Naturally it becomes very treacherous when icy, as a couple of people found out tonight.

I’ve never made contact with either the lightpost or the tree, but I did discover the danger of this curve early on in my driving career. Thankfully I filed that information permanently in my melon, because it was particularly slick there tonight! In fact, I saw a 4×4 go by all stepped out as they tried to avoid the curb. Unlike the people whose wheel tracks appear in this photo, they were successful. The person who connected with the lightpost left some parts behind!

Ice, ice, baby

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I have this crazy friend (okay, I have several, and they have me) who told me how cool it is to drive out on the ice of Lake Audubon. Not only is it a big lake, the ice is very thick, and there are islands to explore. Because boats are not allowed out there, the only way to get to these islands is to drive there during the winter. They’ve got beavers, coyotes, and who knows what else on them. I decided to take him up on the idea of a voyage out there. We didn’t see any critters, and the clear skies turned cloudy on us, but we did come upon a HUGE pressure ridge. Enormous slabs of ice had pushed straight upward in a line stretching almost completely across the big lake!

The sky took a dramatic, ominous look as we climbed up onto the ridge. There was no danger of breaking through the ice; it’s frozen so thick this year that people are bottoming out their ice augers trying to get a fishing hole! The point of the ridge that we chose to explore was on the shore of one of the aforementioned islands as well, not in deep water.

I’m close to six feet tall, but this blue slab of ice was about 1.5 times as tall as me. I climbed up on the ridge to get a decent look at it. I’m told that before the last warm-cold cycle, this ice was all colored blue and lit up on a sunny day. It’s as if Superman dropped a crystal from his ice house, if you know what I mean!


Another spot of color out on the open (albeit frozen) water was this green pool of water. While the ice itself is frozen to a thickness of a few feet, the surface does tend to melt on those warm days. It refreezes when the temperatures drop again, but on a day like today we had plenty of water puddles on top of the ice. We lamented that fact as we walked over to the ridge, as we weren’t wearing waterproof shoes! We parked quite a distance away and walked, in case the ice was weakened near the pressure ridge. We needed the car to get home, after all.

One of the things we really wanted to see was wildlife. Aside from a glimpse of a running coyote on the horizon, we saw nothing. Of course; the presence of a camera jinxed it, I’m sure.

This is a really cool trip if you have the opportunity, especially if the lake and the sky comply. In our case, we were fortunate in that the ice is incredibly thick and stable. The sky is pretty dynamic, of course, and I’m glad that it clouded up for us instead of the hard light of a clear, sunny sky. Despite the absence of critters, we call this trip a success…thanks to the sight of this giant ridge of broken ice.

When frost obscures your view…take frost pictures

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During one of our recent cold snaps, I managed to make my way to the newly updated observation deck of the North Dakota state capitol building. As you may already know, the 18th floor was closed for months while renovations to the upper floors of the capitol building were performed. People from the affected floor would be moved up to 18 while their floor’s work was done. With the updates completed, we get our observation area back…and, in fact, areas that were previously closed up as offices are now wide open. That gives us more windows from which to peer down on Bismarck. That is, of course, when they’re not frosted over.

Frosted over is exactly how I’d describe the majority of the windows that day. Sure, I got the shot looking south that I used to open this post, but that’s such a typical view. I wanted to look out the other windows, but they hadn’t received enough sunlight during the day to rid them of their frost. I’d hiked two hundred and twenty feet for nothing? No. I took the elevator. But my GPS indicated that I went from 1805 feet at the front door of the capitol to 2025 feet on the 18th floor.

So what do you do when the windows are frosted over? As the title of this post suggests: take frost photos. I have a bunch, but don’t care to post them all. I have a little boy dozing off in here, so it’s time to make sure he gets a proper tuck-in and a good night’s sleep. I don’t know what a one year old boy dreams about, but I hope it’s about running around with Daddy and his camera once the weather gets nicer. Maybe he’ll earn himself another cameo on a Dakota Beacon cover!

Bridge over solid water

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You know it’s cold when the bridge turns white! So did the weeds, the trees, and the air during our recent cold snap.

A bit of trivia: see that train coming across the bridge? He’s got a very precise maneuver ahead of him. He’s faced with the challenge of keeping just the right amount of speed as he comes across the bridge. Why’s that? I’ll elaborate.

As a train leaves Mandan and heads east, it begins an uphill journey. The track climbs as it runs parallel to “the Strip” and meets up with the Northern Pacific Bridge. As far as I know, the bridge is level…but the track takes a hard right turn almost as soon as it hits solid ground. That means that the train has to be going slowly enough to make the turn safely, but fast enough to keep momentum as it drags its load up the incline!

When I worked for the Harley-Davidson shop on the Strip (okay, so I still do) I would occasionally watch trains as they went past the back of our shop. Sometimes an especially long or heavy train would go by, slowly losing speed, until it was almost imperceptibly creeping up the incline. Then, as if that last little thread of traction finally broke, the cars would slam as they gave up their forward momentum. Then the train would creep slowly backward into Mandan and take another run at it. Sometimes they’d get a helpful push from the yard locomotive, other times they’d just try to carry a little more speed. This only happened on wet or snowy tracks, by the way.

I hope you enjoy this photo of the frost-glazed NP bridge and the railroad story. If you have the opportunity to watch a train come across in wet or snowy weather, watch and see if they make it on the first try!

Frosty Sunday

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Sakakawea wasn’t the only one taken aback by the frosty, fogged-in capitol building today. There were plenty of us poking around the grounds, even in the early afternoon. I wanted to make it during the morning hours, but was unable to do so before church. I bolted to the capitol immediately after church, and found that the cold temperatures had kept the frost completely intact. There were a few other people poking around with cameras as well.

Somehow, I imagine this is exactly what it was like to be a pioneer some days…braving bitter cold in search of a better life. Thankfully I had the warm truck in which to warm my frozen fingers, because even a few minutes of working the camera made them painfully cold.

This wrought iron horse was a remarkable sight as well, with the gaps in the re-bar sealed with a frosty glaze. I had all but forgotten this statue, but it caught my eye as I rounded the capitol mall. I actually came back later to try a different technique with this statue, and there were still people taking pictures of it. The effect I wanted was to keep the background out of focus, allowing the horse to stand out a little better. It wasn’t easy; I need to get a neutral density filter. I was unable to keep my aperture wide and still keep a slow enough shutter speed to sync to my external flash. I used a lens that tends to help with depth of field, then exaggerated the blur a little in Photoshop.

Check this out – only one side of the horse is frosted! I got the horse at a funky angle here, and I’m not sure if I like it or not. It was accidental; I was paying more attention to other details at the time, so I could get back in the truck and warm my fingers, and get home to my wife and boys. Little PJ has been spitting up, so she kept the boys home from church this morning. Let’s just call the angle ‘artistic’ and not tell anyone, okay?

I also got some other neat frost pictures near the river, but those can wait until another time. As far as I know, the frost is still out there, since the temperatures are cold enough. How long it will last is anybody’s guess…I’m just glad I was able to get out there with my camera to capture it!