One thing that I love doing is taking pictures. I'm not particularly good at it, but that really doesn't stop me. I take pictures of everything -- ask anyone I know. A quick look through the My Pictures folder reveals a dark storm cloud, a stuffed animal, the elevator in my University's library, an anemometer measurement, and my 2010 Census form.
This picture was taken during one of the worst winters the south and east had had in a long time. It was the beginning of January and the end of winter break, and we were on our way to the college in Mobile, AL from Virginia when we stopped at this rest area on I-65 in Greenville, AL. Temperatures were in the mid-teens (I think it was 14°F when we got out of the car) and there were reports of pipes breaking all over the southeast due to the cold. While I was waiting for one of the people with whom I was travelling to come out of the restroom, I spotted a weird object sitting on top of a pipe next to a water fountain. I went over to look, and there was a two and a half foot column of layered ice on top of a bird's nest on this pipe. I ran back to the car, grabbed my camera and took this pic. There were no birds or bird eggs under the ice, thankfully, and I returned to this rest area a few months later and can happily report that they did, in fact, fix the pipe.
What I find more interesting than the picture itself, however, is the story behind it. I could spend hours explaining the story behind every picture on my computer, if anyone was willing to listen (not usually). On the right side of this page, I have a link to my Flickr account. Much to your pleasure (I'm sure), I'll briefly explain the story behind some of the pictures I've uploaded.
These two pictures were taken from the 3rd floor window of a hotel room in Danville, VA at the end of May. We were in the area looking for a place to live, and had just barely settled into the hotel room before it started thundering. We didn't get anything more than a ton of rain (a little over an inch and a half), near-constant lightning, and some pretty awesome views. About 5 miles east of where we were, though, golf ball sized hail fell. Thankfully, the worst part of the storm skirted just passed us.
These two pictures were taken between 6 and 7 PM on May 14, 2010. We had a severe thunderstorm watch, and had never really gotten any of the severe weather we were always promised (hail, damaging winds...very rarely happens when we're under a warned storm), so I didn't pay much mind to the storm. Well, around 6:15 PM, a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for our county. The storm looked like it was going to go north and west of my city, so I went outside and took a picture of the storm going by (not until later did I realize that the cloud formation looked eerily similar to Jay Leno). I went back inside, ate dinner, and afterwards checked the radar again. When I opened the site, I saw that the storm made a sudden turn east and the core of the storm (where the hail is) was going to come right over us. In the middle of my sentence telling my mom this, we heard a horrendous noise outside. I ran out front and there were quarter to ping-pong ball sized hailstones raining down on everything. I grabbed my video camera, took this video (in which I freak out, thinking the car windows would break, and then get hit on the back by one of the hailstones), and after it was done, took a pic of the penny, marble and silver dollar sized hailstones in the grass out front. It was the largest hailstorm I'd ever seen, and one I'll never forget.
This is, for some reason, one of my favorite pictures. It was taken a few days after Christmas, and about a week after we had one of the largest snowstorms in recent memory. 24.5" of snow fell 3 days before Christmas, and temperatures stayed in the low 30s most of the week, helping the snow stick around for a while. The day before this pic was taken, we had a 50degree day, then the temperatures the day I took this pic were in the 40s and we had extremely heavy rain. We went from having 24" of snow on the ground to 2" in a little under 24 hours. Only in Washington DC can you melt two feet of snow in a day.
= Tornado Warning
= Severe T'storm Warning
= Flash Flood Warning
