Astonishing photo by Katarina Stefanovic. See this and 39 other amazing shots at BigPicture.
My picture is nowhere near as stunning… but it’s mine. I love Switzerland with a passion… I wish I were rich enough to afford a retirement home auf der Alm…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Severe hailstorm leaves massive damage in Mississippi.
Heavily damaged home.
Tennis-ball sized hailstones.
Yeehaw.
The Old Wuf has done spoke.
From the Weather Channel today for 84651
A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON MST MONDAY.
* AFFECTED AREA: THE SALT LAKE AND TOOELE VALLEYS ALONG WITH THE SOUTHERN WASATCH FRONT.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: 2 TO 5 INCHES THROUGH MONDAY MORNING WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS.
* TIMING: SNOW… LOCALLY HEAVY AT TIMES… WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE SALT LAKE AND TOOELE VALLEYS… AND SPREAD INTO UTAH COUNTY BY EARLY EVENING. SNOW WILL PERSIST OVERNIGHT BEFORE TAPERING OFF MONDAY MORNING.
* IMPACTS: WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS CAN BE EXPECTED ON ALL AREA ROADWAYS THROUGH TONIGHT.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY MEANS THAT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS. USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.
National Weather Service map. Payson is the red sphere – right in what seems to be the eye of a storm.
Clear to the West, but you can see heavy activity to the North of us.
Heavy snow to the North and East.
Us? 48 degrees, windy and sunny. We may get some activity later, but if we don’t I won’t complain – the mountains are picking up a good dose of moisture and I won’t have to shovel as much. The alert says we won’t get ours until early evening, but right now looking at the radar map, we’ll still be on the edge of it, unless the system is traveling southeast.
Edit: next morning – about 4 inches of fresh snow. Looks like the storm was indeed heading southeast. Now it’s partly sunny and colder, but I’m still grateful for the water!
We expect the ground under our feet to stay in one place. We like terra firma – and as Larry Fine said, “the more firma, the less terra.”
Earthquakes and landslides defy that expectation, and as a result can be some of the most disturbing experiences.
On February 15, 2010, after a long period of heavy rains, a hillside in Maierato, Calabria, Italy simply let go, and gracefully slid into the valley below. It looked more like a river than a solid land mass.
The Italian news outlet had this to say about the event:
“A mass evacuation took place in Maierato, a village of 2300 inhabitants in the province of Vibo Valentia, on Monday where an entire mountainside near the center of town collapsed, endangering houses. The first 300 people were evacuated from their homes as early as Monday evening and Tuesday morning the evacuation of the entire surrounding area was begun. More than 200 people have been placed in the police school of Vibo. Another ninety people will be placed in the sports hall of Vibo. Others will be brought into the sports hall of Monte Poro which can accommodate 400 to 500 people, but many of the evacuees have already found refuge in the homes of relatives and friends.
Tons of earth now cover what until recently was a valley. The ridge has brushed dozens of dwellings, putting at risk the buildings that are located at the top which may slip down if the landslide continues to move. This is a significant risk, as it has started to rain with some insistence. The landslide has a front a couple of miles wide, and has swept away roads and water lines, so that the region is completely deprived of water.”
Il vecchio lupo ha parlato.
A collection of beautiful and unusual cloud formations. The 5th one in the series is an obvious photoshop of the second one, but all the rest appear to be genuine, and breathtaking. Here are three samples:
Meterological phenomena are captivating.
Photo ©Mike Baker
This stunning sun pillar was photographed in Clarissa MN on 11-22-2010, but I can’t remember who sent it to me. I saw a perfect moon pillar once, but sadly had no camera with me to capture it. Sundogs, haloes and pillars are formed when ice crystals in the atmosphere align in particular ways to reflect light. To see one is a rare and impressive event.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
While Utah suffers under the effects of a temperature inversion, Australia is so bloody hot they ran out of colors for their heat map.
Sorry, mates. One of my friends suggested opening a bunch of Aperture Science portals between places – I know a buddy in Sydney and a buddy in Fairbanks, Alaska who would really be down with some serious thermal exchange right about now.
(Yes, I know portals don’t float in midair like this. Buzz off.)
Short of that, finding one of Larry Niven’s transfer booths would be a good solution for a respite.
The Old Wolf has Spoken.
Our local news station gives us the following forecast:
And AccuWeather adds insult to injury with this one:
Folks, it’s nowhere near 31° today. In Payson, the current temperature is 14°, because we’re sitting under one of these:
Image: The Deseret News
We live in a valley, and when a layer of warm air floats over, it caps the valley like a saucer on a bowl, trapping cold air (and ever-growing pollution) beneath it.
Image: waow.com
This is not uncommon in our area – we put up with it just about every year – but when it lasts a long time, it really sucks. People with respiratory issues are advised to stay inside, and it just keeps being cold, cold, cold.
The only thing that helps is a a low-pressure system which effectively “lifts the lid” and a good storm will scoop out the air, but we don’t look to get one of those until Thursday, and it will probably be a weak one.
Yuck.
On the upside, people at the ski resorts are enjoying divine weather, and many Utahns escape to the slopes as a respite for the cold hqiz below – which is good for the economy.
Everything I can find out about this photo indicates that it’s a Tibetan landscape. No idea who took the photo, or exactly where it is. If you find a definitive attribution, let me know in a comment and I’ll update the info. Whate’er the case, it’s breathtaking.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Amazing, isn’t it? Takes your breath away. Despite having been posted over 600,000 times all over the internet, it’s not real.
The Lion’s Mane Jellyfish (cyanea capillata) is big indeed – the largest recorded specimen found, which washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, had a bell (body) with a diameter of 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) and tentacles 120 feet (37 m) long. A similar-sized beast, the Nomura’s Jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai), grows up to 2 m (6.6 ft) in diameter and weighs up to 200 kg (440 lb).
Lion’s Mane Jellyfish
Nomura’s jellyfish
The photo above gives you a better idea of just how big these jellies can be. They are quite large, but not as large as the one in the picture above.
An article at Forbes give’s a journalist’s analysis of why the first image is a fake, based on the kind of internet research that a journalist would do. Not bad sleuthing – the author, Anthony Wing Kosner, describes how his research led him to this article at io9, and he gives some other supporting data as well, such as a debate over at Snopes.com which began in 2007. However, one paragraph of his article disturbed me. He said,
“I agree with all of McClain’s arguments except the one about the Photoshop “halo.” The image of the diver does indeed seem to be in a different light than the surrounding image, but it is hard for anyone but a forensic image analyst to tell the difference between the artifact-ing that happens naturally through jpeg compression around contrasting edges in an image, and an actual “halo” of extra edge-pixels on a pasted-in element.”
Well, that’s a load of high-grade steer manure. Anyone who has worked with images can spot a blatant photoshop manipulation fairly easily. Enlarge the diver next to the “super giant” and sharpen the image a few times, and that “halo” becomes much more obvious.
Compare this with an enlarged and sharpened version of the real photo:
If you look around the jelly you can see some evidence of jpeg compression and luminosity variances, but nothing like the obvious manipulation around the diver in the first picture. It may be true that high-quality forgeries require photographic forensic tools to identify, but the one in question doesn’t fall into that category.
There are enough wonders in this universe to boggle our minds without resorting to creating them; unfortunately, in the age of Facebook and Pinterest and Twitter, a phony picture will circle the globe nine times before someone says, “Wait, what?”
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Don’t try to give a bouquet of these to your girlfriend.
The Kadupul flower, or Epiphyllum oxypetalum, blooms rarely, only at night, and its blossoms wilt before dawn. Even if you live in it’s native habitat of Sri Lanka, you’re unlikely to see its delicate beauty. And, it doesn’t smell very nice, either.
The world is so full of a number of things…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 