2020-21 NH Winter/SH Summer Photo Thread (spoilers please!)

Prickly pear cactus



Scrub lupine in bloom

Twas a rainy day, 22.5 mm @ Orly airport.





The Seine burst its banks. You're supposed to be able to walk in the space between the quay and the barges.





Low ceiling, not much higher than 200 m:





Lawns were soaking wet:





Cold today, about -5°C and quite breezy when the shot was taken.

Lots of epiphytes on this live oak tree



Oaks and maples are almost fully leafed out now



Gopher tortoise

Hard to believe these houses are just 2.5km away from the city center. Looks very rural.


Fancy looking houses


I don't really have any broadleaf forests near me anymore. This one's 2km away.


For some reason, despite us not going above freezing (almost) since 2020, this tiny pond has exposed water. Must be some kind of pipes running through or filling into the pond.


People on the south side of the river are crossing by snow mobile to buy groceries at the local "walmart".


Pretty decent sunset over the small industrial/shopping at the edge of the town next to the river. Airport's behind the trees on the other side of the river.


Dusky forest pics:


For some reason this particular spot had loads of snow on the branches of the spindly broadleaf trees.


Cliffy terrain looks neat covered in snow.


Astounding low-light performance from this new camera app.


5pm, well after the 16.08 sunset. Not any noise or grain at all in the image, and both shadows and highlights are preserved. You can even see the crescent moon. This was handheld from my phone. Amazing.

I took this shot of the blinding sun, and you see those kids in the far distance? When we passed eachother they asked:
"Did you take a photo of us?"
"Yes."
"Why??"
"You were in the way."
"You are not kind!!"
"Ok."
"What if we didn't want our pictures taken??"
That was pretty funny, hearing them shout at my back. I love being that young adult that offends little brats.


My friend's parents have quite some snow on their yard.


I was surprised to find quite a lot of open water in the river, considering we've been averaging -9.9'C this year at the airport, only going above freezing once with a 1.8'C high on Jan 23rd. In the distance you can see one of the most failed bridges in the world. It's supposed to complete the final quarter of the Umeå ring road, but it's been affected by numerous landslides, with at least a couple this fall alone, with the last one completely deforming a part of the bridge beyond restoration, and now they have no idea how to continue, and they're talking about scrapping pretty much the entire bridge and building a new one from scratch. They've already gone way over budget.


This is a picture of the bridge from September showing the damages. Notice the deformed metal by the pillar.


Anyway, here's a bridge that hasn't collapsed and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The bent pine in the center-left of the shot looks pretty neat imo.


Here there's almost no ice to speak of.


A little more ice looking eastward. And ski tracks. Would you wanna go skiing on this river right now?


This lady certainly wanted to. I sat myself down in the sun to watch a zoom lecture. Very bright and very comfortable with a decent warming from the near 100% albedo sunlight and absolutely zero wind. About -3'C, maybe cooler down in the river because it's basically just a massive hyper-albedo frost hollow, at least where there isn't any running water. 


Cute sheds. Just to the right of this image there was a girl sunbathing on one of those rollable outdoor foam mats.


I found these weird formations. I think they're from rocks in the water. Each of these three have a large rock reaching almost to the surface, causing turbulence in the water as well as piling of ice. I think.


I used to come here in the spring when I lived nearby 2019 and 2020, and sunbathe while watching all the hundreds of swans that gather around this spot each spring. Very beautiful spot.


You know it's been a lot of cold, clear and calm nights when the snow looks like this. To those of you not living in snowy climates you might not know what I'm talking about, but the snow is covered by 1cm thick cover of pure frost. Especially visible in the far left of the image.


Ah, I've almost missed birch forests since moving to my new apartment on the hospital hill. Birch trees do have their time and place, and it's this one.


I expected there to be a lot more snow in this part of the town compared to where I lived, since just 20km inland from the western edge of Umeå (at a 50m higher altitude) the snow cover was half a meter deeper than in south-central Umeå. I was surprised to find the snow cover was just as low, if not lower than around my apartment. Those marshmallow looking hay bales are excellent measures for snow depth since they have a pretty constant size. The normal size is 1.2m in height and 1.15m in diameter. I had to look that up, but upon looking it up I've actually kinda changed my mind. If those hay bales are 1.2m tall, then the snow cover must be around 75-100cm deep (A rather significant variation can be easily seen in the image as well)


This is why I prefer broadleaf forests, even decidual ones in winter, over conifer forests. They're so much brighter. These are of course very spindly because they're right by the river, subject to flooding, soil saturation and perhaps strong winds, reducing their life spans. But I like them still.



I wonder why this particular spot had so much more snow on the branches and trunks. Maybe because it was 10m away from the river instead of 2m. Trees do seem a bit older and thicker on average. Anyway, I just remember why I took this image. Look on the lower right of the image. That's the remains of a bird. I can only assume a cat did that since I don't really expect there to be foxes running around hunting prey in these spindly forests in the middle of the city. Only other option would be a lynx, but they're so rare, and I don't know if they tend to hang around this close to cities either. Either way, I'm impressed that a medium sized terrestial predator managed to catch a bird with this much snow, snow thickness, and brightness. Bright white race cats aren't very common outdoors either. The ones people let roam outside tend to be Norwegian forest cats, or other generic mixed-race house cats.


So beautiful.


30 meters from the river is where the first spruce shows up.


Further up ahead the willows and bird-cherries give way for aspen and then more typical spruce forest.


But I didn't want to continue heading up. I wanted to walk along the river. What's interesting about the path across this field is that the walls of snow to either side of the path created a very nice cradle for all the cold air to pool. Walking through here, my legs got noticably cooler than before. It felt like the air around my legs were over 5'C colder than the air around my face. Especially considering the sun was starting to get pretty low which meant the path barely received any sun whatsoever, and I guess since there wasn't any wind at all, the snowy ground was free to radiationally cool as much as it wanted. Obviously the whole field, at least on the left side, is a large frost hollow.


Frozen creek. I used to throw stuff into this creek and watch it float through to the other side of the bridge all the time when I was a kid (I grew up nearby).


Unlike the ruined bridge, this one wasn't a failure. Sure, in the end it cost three times the original budget, but it's been a huge success. Everyone loves it and there are sooo many more people running and walking around this area now than ever before. Very nice. Looks very industrial though with its naked concrete exterior. Would it have cost that much more to have a fancier looking exterior?


15:01, sun's getting lower and noticably cooler.


Looks neat. Also love the intensity of the blue sky.


Walked all the way to downtown.


I like those two spruce trees. Think they're an American variety though, a slightly bluer tint than normal ones. At least the right one is.


A (pretty pathetic) parkour park.


Mist over the exposed water started getting pretty heavy, pretty quickly.


That left tower is pretty much the first thing you see as you enter the downtown area while driving through Umeå, as it's right next to the main road through the city. And it's basically Big Ben if Big Ben were just a large brick slab instead of a proper clock tower. Really ugly building. Good they're building a new one next to it that looks to be a little nicer.


Main road in question. Rozenn's driven over that bridge IIRC.


The mist from the river even managed to swell up onto the riverside path 2m above the water. You can just about see it in this picture.

 
I've really come to like the look of this building. For years, just about every person in the city hated it. Now I at least love it.


I'd love to live in one of those apartments on top of the main downtown mall. Apparently they aren't even that expensive. I think a 2 bedroom 80m2 apartment only costs about 600k$ with a very reasonable rent of 300$, IIRC. They're super fancy, and they also get access to some pretty fancy facilities and huge shared rooftop patio.


I ate a burger they had for sale, along with some sweet potato fries, then I went back to the river. Mist had really built up a lot. I remembered it feeling a lot mistier than it looks on the picture though.


Not the best sunset but it was better than nothing.


My plan was to walk home, but the temperature was dropping really quickly, aat least down by the river, so I turned back to grab a bus instead.