SPECIAL WEATHER EFFECTS
SECTION -
SUNSETS, FOG AND STRANGENESS!
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Most of the images on this page come from the
time before I took up weather-photography
seriously, so that they are the fruits of
opportunism/luck in the main! It's often said
that, for us severe weather obsessives, sunsets
only really count if they've got a tornado
silhouetted in them!
In an attempt to disprove the above statement,
here are some sunsets from Mid-Wales and beyond,
some weird/not-so-weird fog effects and a couple
of even stranger weatherpix!
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Above Cymerau in the early 1990s. The hills
hereabouts are richly wooded with small
scrub-oaks which make ideal silhouette material!
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A little bit of camera-shake here but there was a
freezing force 9 easterly blowing at the time
(December 1997). I was on Anglesey: this is the
headgear of the Parys Mountain mine, where a
mining company had sunk a shaft a few years
before...
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April
1990, after closing time at the Allt Bar near
Knockan in Assynt, NW Scotland. A well-used
watering hole for geologists, climbers and
fishermen! When I used to be a "voluntary
worker" with the British Geological Survey
the work was hard but the places it took me were
fantastic!The
mountain is Suilven, perhaps the most striking of
all our hills. Well worth climbing despite the
7-mile walk-in from Lochinver. The farther top is
completely flat, about the size of a small lawn
and covered in fine turf!
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This was taken on Borth Beach in 1991. |
This
was again sometime in the early 1990s, looking
from Talybont over Borth Bog and to the last
light on the sea beyond.
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Parallel lines - Cardigan Bay from Carn Owen,
near Talybont, ca. 1990. The sea's 10 miles away
and the effect was got with a telephoto
lens......
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This was taken on a really cold day and I think
that feeling comes out to an extent (well, that
was the idea!!). Nowadays I'd describe this as a
line of Cbs out to the SW with fog forming over
frost-fields in the foreground! Near Lampeter,
Dec 1996.
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Dawn from Rhiwlwyfen, a farm in the hills near
Machynlleth, where I lived 1994-2000. Up here,
you couldn't fail to notice the weather - it was
all around. Oddly, just after I left in 2000, my
now empty flat was struck by lightning and the
bathroom ceiling collapsed!
|
November 1991, from Dyfi Bridge, Machynlleth. It
had been foggy all day which allowed a very weird
lighting effect as the sun went down. The bright
light in the middle is car headlights on the
Aberdyfi road....
UPDATE: there is a reason for this strange glow,
as set out by Chris Chatfield of TORRO: "I
would like to suggest that the November 1991
picture from Dyfi Bridge is a volcanic sunset
caused by Mount Pinatubo ash. I saw quite a few
post-sunset purple glows and 'ultracirrus' around
the end of 1991, though the best volcanic sunset
effects were after El Chicon in 1982."
Thanks, Chris!
|
Taken in April 2002: an unusual sun-pillar
extends up from the horizon just after the sun
has set at Ynyslas. Sun-pillars are most likely
to form when high-level clouds are present. Platy
ice-crystals falling within the cloud, with a
gentle side-to-side rocking motion, reflect the
sunrays back to the observer as a standing beam
of light. Sometimes when ice-crystals are present
at much lower altitudes the same effect may be
generated by city lights!
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This one shows an important weather phenomenon
that can create interesting opportunities for any
landscape photographer. It requires calm weather
to develop well, and you may like to try and reflect
on what this image is!! Taken near Bugeilyn above
Machynlleth on an autumn day, mid-1990s. Things
are not always what they initially seem.......
Another big clue is that, when viewed properly
it doesn't look so good! |
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