A vivid rainbow spans the eastern sky after a brief but intense shower just after 5:00 PM on Thursday, August 14, 2008. The spectacle was viewed from the parking lot at Noelridge Christian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Rainbows mainly form from isolated rain showers separated by reasonably large clear areas. The splash of color is created from light entering a raindrop and being refracted into its component colors.
The setting sun is formed into a sun dog (parhelia) in the southwest sky at Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa a little after 5:00 PM on February 18, 2008. Sun dogs, also known as mock suns, are created by sunlight refracted through a 22 degree angle by horizontally oriented hexagonal ice crystal plates formed near the ground. They are usually (but not always) seen in very cold conditions. This view looks over a row of houses along Chatham Road NE from the park.
I was playing softball at Noelridge Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on the evening of July 27, 2009 and couldn't get to my camera as a billowing cumulonimbus cloud formed beautifully in the northeast sky. After the game and as I neared home, I finally captured the developing structure (shown here) at 8:20 PM, illuminated by the sun which had just set and sporting an overshooting top. This view looks east from the parking lot at Noelridge Christian Church in Cedar Rapids. The storm cell skirted north of the Cedar Rapids metropolitan area and later passed eastward into Jo Daviess and Stephenson counties in northwest Illinois, some 90 miles away, which was where it was located when this picture was taken. Both Illinois counties experienced severe thunderstorm warnings as a result of the storm cell.
Looking like phantom curtains blowing in the wind, a colorful Aurora Borealis display dazzles the night sky in Cedar Rapids, Iowa around 7:45 PM on November 5, 2001. The Northern Lights first appeared as a whitish glow, not unlike city lights, along the northern horizon, then moved skyward, morphing into different shapes and displaying vivid greens and reds. This view looks northeast over Brookdale Lane NE in the Northbrook II residential development. The bright star at the end of the tree branch at center is Capella. The planet Saturn is the bright object to the right of the tree trunk at far right.
One day removed from full, a rising moon glows from amid clouds in the southeastern sky from Marion, Iowa around 10:00 PM, Monday, July 26, 2010. This composite shot was taken from Timber Oak Court, just off Boyson Road and west of Alburnett Road in Marion. Within an hour of this capture all of the obscuring clouds had gone. The sky was a four-second exposure at f/5.6 with an ISO rating of 400. The waning gibbous moon was shot at 1/2000 sec. at f/5.6.
Sunbeams break through the clouds over the Belle Fourche River valley in northeastern Wyoming on the evening of August 14, 1978. This view looks south from near Devil's Tower National Monument. Devil's Tower, America's oldest national monument (proclaimed as such by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906), was a two-day stop on a two-week vacation trip out west by a group of my friends and me. The unique monument, which rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche valley, is of volcanic origin and was prominently showcased in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight--well, sort of. At least a pink sky in this case. The southeast sky provided this bank of pink cirrocumulus undulatus clouds at Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa around 8:45 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010. The more subtle pink sky in the east was a direct contrast to a brilliant red, orange and yellow sky in the west as the sun began to set that evening. Widespread layers of cirrocumulus clouds may indicate instability in an area, and may move ahead of an advancing weather system. Things were definitely not rosy earlier on this day in the Lake Delhi area, about 36 miles to the northeast, as the dam there on the Maquoketa River was compromised, causing tremendous flooding and damage to people and property.
Thursday night's attempt at shooting night lightning in northeast Cedar Rapids, Iowa ended without success, only a clear-sky shot of the planet Venus. Friday night (July 23, 2010) brought more storms and provided a little more to work from. The evening storms came through the city in two waves, the first bringing dangerous lightning and heavy rain that kept me in the house. The second wave had its moments, showing three particularly great lightning flashes (all of which I missed). This image, looking west from my usual spotting position, was one of the few decent shots I was able to capture. It's a 20-second exposure at f/7.1, with an ISO rating of 200, shot just before 10:00 PM.
I had hoped to get shots of night lightning in a towering cumulonimbus cloud on the night of Thursday, July 22, 2010. Our team was playing in a sandpit volleyball game several miles from home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and I was without my tripod. By the time I got home from the game, lower level clouds had moved in obscuring the cumulonimbus cloud, preventing me from capturing the shots I wanted from this location. At this time the western sky began to clear showing off a brilliant planet Venus, allowing me a "consolation" shot at 10:00 PM. Despite the fact that the storm clouds were moving swiftly away from us to our north--canceling severe thunderstorm watches--several counties in eastern Iowa, including this one, were still under a tornado watch. This photo was a six-second time exposure at f/6.3 with an ISO rating of 200.
Shafts of sunlight break through the clouds along the shores of Lake Erie at Marblehead Lighthouse State Park, Marblehead, Ohio on Monday, July 19, 2010. This photo, taken around 9:00 AM EDT, looks east. At right is the park's namesake, Marblehead Lighthouse. The 50-foot-tall structure, built in 1821, is the Great Lakes' oldest continuously operational lighthouse. The park was our family's first vacation stop of the day before spending the rest of the day at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, a little over three miles to the southeast.
Shortly after I was assuring a neighbor that no further storms would reach our area in northeast Cedar Rapids, Iowa around 7:00 PM on April 6, 2010, I began to hear thunder and see churning black clouds to our northwest. So much activity that I jumped in my car to take up a storm spotter's position. As I turned north on C Avenue NE from Boyson Road, I saw this very low-hanging cloud about a half-mile ahead of me. I continued driving and eventually stopped at the Echo Hill Presbyterian Church on C Avenue to get a better view of it. Sirens were sounding, but I was not convinced it was a genuine funnel cloud, so I did not phone in a spotter's report. The cloud soon broke up and later weather data determined that it probably was not tornadic, just a scary and unique looking scud cloud. This view looks north on C Avenue as the cloud was drifting over the road from left to right.
An ominous-looking shelf cloud appears to be rolling over on itself as it approaches the water tower in Hiawatha, Iowa just before noon on Friday, June 18, 2010. The shelf cloud was the leading edge of a squall line that produced 40 mph winds, heavy rain and dangerous lightning. The storm was the first of two similar systems that moved through the Cedar Rapids metropolitan area on June 18. This photo was shot from the Fay Clark Park in the city of Hiawatha and looks southwest.
The sun shines feebly through a winter morning fog as seen from Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on February 23, 2008. This view looks east toward Brentwood Drive NE and was taken around 10:30 AM. The interesting-looking tree in the foreground at left is a European Larch, a tree with needle-like leaves that fall in the autumn (deciduous conifer).
The sun rises in a pastel sky above the Painted Desert east of Grand Canyon National Park on the morning of June 3, 1980, as seen in this capture from the canyon's South Rim. Two friends and I had just completed a four-day, three-night backpacking trip in the huge expanse--hiking down the South Kaibob trail from the South Rim, nearly to the North Rim and eventually back up Bright Angel trail on the South Rim--and were preparing to leave northern Arizona at this time for southwestern Utah and Zion National Park.
The edge of a violent storm system looms behind the Nashua, Iowa water tower at 6:45 PM on May 25, 2008. The storm system was actually retreating from this location, which looks southeast from the local Casey's convenience store on Amherst Boulevard. An hour earlier, sirens prompted Casey's employees and patrons alike to go under cover here. The storm system did its worst stuff after 5:00 PM when an EF5 tornado formed in its highly unstable mix then plowed through the towns of Parkersburg and New Hartford about 30 miles to the southwest of Nashua. Nashua is located in the northeastern part of the state, at the junction of US highways 18 and 218, southeast of Charles City.
Two bright "shooting stars" (horizontal lines at lower left) from the annual Leonids meteor shower streak across the northeast sky in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the early morning of November 17, 1998. The meteors are emanating from the "radiant," or origin, located in the constellation Leo at far right. This 20-minute time exposure, begun around 1:30 AM, looks toward Council Street NE. The meteor shower, which extends from November 13-21 each year, is the result of debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle entering the Earth's upper atmosphere. Most of the debris is merely dust-sized.
Reminding me very much of the invading alien spacecraft taking up their positions in our skies in the 1996 film Independence Day, this rogue supercell produced an impressive looking wall cloud north of Cedar Rapids, Iowa on May 30, 2002. I was surprised to hear thunder while indoors that evening as the western sky was clear and sunny, so I went outside to see what it was all about. My son and I went up on top of our roof to get a better look at the structure and I captured video of it with my old Sony Handycam Vision Video 8 camcorder. This image, looking north over the Northbrook II residential development and taken at 7:40 PM, is a still captured from our TV screen taken with my Nikon DSLR camera. The isolated supercell moved in a southeasterly direction but slid north and east of our position. Curiously, no sirens sounded in Cedar Rapids, but did so in Marion as the storm passed over that city less than a half-hour later.
A sun pillar shoots skyward in a brilliant early-January sky in 2000. This photo looks southwest with the setting sun partially hidden behind a silhouetted Northbrook Baptist Church on Boyson Road NE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sun pillars are formed in cold air when the sun is rising or setting, created from falling ice crystals that reflect the sunlight into a column of light. The ice crystals usually fall from cirrus or alto clouds. A column of light in a sun pillar can extend below the sun as well.
I was returning home with friends from a backpacking trip in the San Juan National Forest northwest of Durango, Colorado. Later, as we were driving north on US Highway 85/87 just south of Pueblo on Sunday, May 30, 1982, we witnessed this lone towering cumulonimbus cloud in the direction of the city. Because of its mushroom-shaped appearance and the fact that there were no other clouds in sight, we joked that maybe Pueblo had just been nuked in a Cold War attack. As we got closer, though, it was WE who found ourselves under "attack." Our vehicle got hammered with golf ball-sized hail from the storm, forcing us to pull over to side of the road until it passed.
Streamers of green a red radiate from the northeastern sky during an Aurora Borealis display in this short time-exposure capture around 9:30 PM on November 5, 2001. The auroras, more familiarly known as "The Northern Lights," were caused by a powerful solar flare a day earlier. The colorful displays are a result of oxygen and nitrogen atoms in an excited state from the collision of solar wind above 50 miles in the Earth's atmosphere. Green indicates oxygen emissions; red, nitrogen. The bright star at top center is Capella. The planet Saturn is the left bright spot in the red area above the house roof, the star Aldebaran is next to it at right. Rising but partially obscured by the trees at bottom center is a waning gibbous moon and the planet Jupiter. The houses in the background are located on Brookdale Lane NE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Unfortunately, the latter was the case on this day. As the Cedar River in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa was causing alarm with its rising waters from continuing heavy rain on the afternoon of Thursday, June 12, 2008, so too were its tributaries. After getting off work that afternoon I got an up-close and personal look at an area of Dry Run Creek in Marion along Boyson Road. In this photo you see the trailhead from the parking lot at Boyson Park. The submerged trail goes between the two trees at center and veers off to the right in the background. The water level at this location, though very high, never quite ran over Boyson Road. Dry Run Creek merges with Indian Creek at Donnelly and Willow parks in Marion. Indian Creek, in turn, merges with the Cedar River south of the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, just west of Highway 13/151.
Rain, snow and fog closed in on us as we traveled westward through the Bighorn Mountains along US Highway 16 in northern Wyoming on August 14, 1978. Eight of us guys, known collectively as "The Fussum" (it's a long story so don't ask) were taking part in a two-week "whirlwind" tour of the west from our two vehicles. Our route featured stops at the Badlands, Black Hills, Devil's Tower National Monument, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, Great Salt Desert, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco/Oakland and finally Reno. To show how temperatures can be extreme in a relative close proximity, just two days prior to when this photo was shot while we were in the Badlands of South Dakota, it was clear and 102 degrees!
The constellation Orion (left center) appears to be receiving signals as it is framed by two transmitter towers on Boyson Road NE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, between C Avenue and Council Street on September 22, 1999. This short time exposure, looking south, was taken at 5:15 am from the entrance of Friendship Baptist Church. The tower on the left, and the FOX Network television transmitter building below it, were both removed about eight years later. The 703-foot tower on the right is currently operated by Century Communications LLC. The bright star at lower left is Sirius, "the dog star."
Resembling lava lamp globules, these very pronounced mammatus clouds filled the sky over the western horizon at Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Friday evening, July 24, 2009. The clouds appeared about an hour before a strong storm moved through the area and captured the gaze of many curious backyard sky observers. Mammatus clouds often form in a very moist and unstable middle or upper level in the atmosphere, overlying a drier layer below an adjacent cumulonimbus anvil. Large mammatus formations can be indicators of imminent severe weather.
This is how a segment of the flooded Cedar River in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa looked shortly before noon on Wednesday, June 11, 2008. A corner of the Third Avenue bridge is seen at left foreground while City Hall and the Second Avenue bridge is at background right. The water level was around 20 feet at this time, heading for an unbelievable crest of 31.3 feet on June 13. The inundation caused widespread damage of homes and businesses in the city, covering about 10 square miles. Shortly after I took this photograph with a co-worker's camera, the Third Avenue bridge was closed and would become awash from the flood waters on the following day.
These rising celestial bodies appear on parade in this time exposure photo I took for extra credit in my high school astronomy class. I shot about 22 exposures on the same film frame-- each about seven minutes apart--from about midnight on the early morning of October 8, 1974, until 2:15 am. At left (brightest object) is a waning gibbous moon. The speck just left of the moon is the planet Saturn. The row of stars at right make up the constellation Orion. This photo, taken along 30th Street Drive SE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a B&W photo converted into a duotone.
Two backpacking buddies and I saw this large rain shaft in the Chisos Basin from a lofty hiking trail at Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas on May 27, 1984. Although striking in appearance, we all hoped the rain would stay where it was in the park's lowlands because we were in search of a camp site for the night on our two-day stay. It did, and the trio stayed high and dry the entire time.
Hale-Bopp, one of the brightest comets of the 20th century, could be seen in our skies for a record 19 months--from May, 1996-November, 1997. The comet received its name from its co-discoverers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. The comet can be seen at center in this photograph taken from the grounds of the former Cedar Rapids Friends Church (now Living Hope Wesleyan Church) in NE Cedar Rapids, Iowa at 7:15 pm on March 30, 1997. The houses in the background are a part of the area's Northbrook II residential development. Although the sun had set 45 minutes before, its glow was still evident on the western horizon. The yellowish splotch just above the tree line at extreme lower left is the planet Mercury, often difficult to observe.
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