I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”
Ephemeral and ever-changing clouds can brighten up an otherwise bland sky or foreshadow a storm. Although many of the days this last week have been hot with little wind and plain blue skies, I did manage to photograph some interesting clouds the last three weeks of Spring.
The three image panorama below shows Burkehaven Lighthouse in the distance to the left and Mount Sunapee to the right. It was taken at 2:07 PM, June 2.
From June 2 through 10, my cloud file is empty. I don’t recall if I didn’t look skyward those days or if what I saw lacked interest. I did get some photos of House Wrens building a nest in a dead tree.
Then, on June 11, there was a nice sunset. The photos in this slide show were taken between 8:16 and 8:24 PM.
Early afternoon of June 12, I created a 16-photo panorama at Lake Sunapee. Mount Sunapee is at the far left of the image.
On June 13 Jann and I traveled to Pillsbury State Park, a little-known gem. I have kayaked, hiked, snowshoed, and mountain biked there. The park has wonderful campsites, a few reachable only by boat. The clouds were nice but not spectacular.
Our travels that day took us past Eccardt Farm in East Washington. It has interesting barns and animals for children (and adults) to explore, and they sell their own raw milk, home grown grass-fed beef, pork and lamb, eggs, seasonal fruits and vegetables, ice cream, and other goodies in a small farm stand.
The clouds built nicely midday June 13. Below are photos from Sutton and Sunapee.
June 14 produced a spectacular sunset with very intense colors.
There were nice white puffy clouds on June 19. I even caught a bit of cloud iridescence. This is a fairly common, but seldom seen, phenomenon. People don’t often look directly at the sun. If you want to learn more about Iridescent Clouds, you can CLICK HERE.
The last morning of Spring I photographed the Milky Way at around 2:45 AM. There were a few clouds that added color to the mass of stars. Low in the sky are Saturn and Jupiter above and slightly to the left of Mount Sunapee. Above them is Altair, and higher up and to the right is Vega, the brightest star in the constellation of Lyra.
As Spring drew to an end, the clouds put on a nice show early afternoon.
Then mid-afternoon, the sky got dramatic. There was loud lightening and bright thunder, or maybe vice versa. I quickly unplugged my computer and hard drives and got the photos below between 3:13 and 3:16 PM, about two and a half hours before the Spring Solstice and the beginning of Summer. It never rained, prolonging our drought.
I wonder what summer will bring.