I woke this morning to a pounding head and a dizziness. While fumbling to the shower, I called to check on the temperature; still a balmy -42°F. "UGH again?" as I listened to this cheerful recorded voice. In an attempt to clear my head, I stood in the pounding water, trying to breath in the steam.
I have random thoughts while taking a shower, I never cease to be amazed on the weird things that pop into my mind while going through the motions. I thought about how the weather reports had said this would be a La Nina winter, with it being colder and wetter than normal. If there was ever a winter that this was truer, I haven't seen it. With the "Icepocalypse" rain we had in November to the coldest average temperature in December, we've had nothing but ice and cold so far this winter.
Since our summers are usually a reflection of our winter, I recalled about how we had a wet summer. I witnessed more rainbows this year than any year that I can remember. While we had great hot sunshine and lots of sunny days, we still had storms almost every evening. One of my favorite landscape photographers Jon Cornforth made a comment that stuck in my mind that he preferred a cloudy day to a completely blue sky because it added so much to his photographs. Having a clear sunny day washes out the landscape on the photographs, while clouds give texture and offer better light.
Then I realized that without such a wet summer, I NEVER would have been able to capture the amazing images that I witnessed this summer. This summer was by far the best for weather formations, with dark clouds, lightening, rainbows and pink sunsets. I doubt we'll have another stormy summer like this last one again for a while, so I'm grateful for the chance to witness the enormity and awe of the Alaskan summer sky this year. Even thought we're enduring a wet and very cold winter, I think it was worth it. If you want to see more, I linked this post to my weather section on SmugMug.
