Saturday, March 28, 2009

Lightning pics




These AWESOME pictures were taken by Bretwood Higman of the Redoubt eruption this morning/last night. They've thought there was lightning but no one had seen it. These are absolutely breathtaking. If you want to see more pictures go to http://www.avo.alaska.edu/volcanoes/volcimage.php?volcname=Redoubt Then if you want to see what's going on with the volcano click Current activity in the upper right quarter of the page. Pretty cool stuff!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Digital Scrapping



I was spending some time on the computer yesterday looking at the pictures that I got of all the volcano stuff, and thought I might as well do a little digital scrapbooking while I was at it. I'm not really sure I like the colors of the layout, but of the papers I had, these were the best for the intense colors of the photos. Anyway, this is them.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Redoubt Redoubt How do you fly!

These first pictures are the ash cloud as it came rolling in. The sky had been the brightest blue we've seen in months. Then the ash started coming. Be sure to notice how white the snow is in the first pictures, and how not white it is later.









I love the contrast in this picture also, the stark white of the snow with the almost black ash cloud. After this, the cloud turned brown. Then about 2 hours later it started dropping ash. It looked like a snow storm, only when we went out, it was grit falling from the sky.


Ash cloud moving towards us. See how white the snow is?
I love the picture above. Its such a clear, stark contrast between where the ash cloud ends on the left, and the blue sky on the right. Right after I took these pictures it got really dark in the house as the cloud blotted out the sun.


Above is ash in the water/runoff on the step.
On the bed of the truck
Above is ash sitting in the tread of Justin's tires
The picture above is ash accumulated on the back of Justin's pickup










Poor Bill's car
Ash accumulated on the goat barn door knob.

The above picture is the drop cloth on the snow.

The white is where I had my drop cloth laid out.

As soon as the ash cloud lifted completely we got a great view of Redoubt chugging away with a new plume that also contained ash. So amazing!


Here's some of the ash I collected. I laid our some garbage bags flat on the deck, as soon as the ash started to fall. Then I just left them to sit until it was over, then I dumped it all into this one container. Except the one that had some melted snow, its settling out in a jar in the kitchen. This isn't even anything compared with how much we got on the big drop cloth in the front yard. That one has a bit of melting to do, I let a lot of snow land on it when I picked it up.



Man we had a cool day! I LOVE stuff like this, totally cool stuff. This morning when I got up I felt really odd, and this weird pressure. Then when I got up, about 5 minutes after I got up, Redoubt blew up in its largest eruption yet, over 65,000 feet! So then I was looking at the ash projections, and it showed them coming here, and I thought, well that's odd. So I went and checked the weather service and sure enough, it was headed right for us. Justin and I hurried and put all the animals away, closed all their doors, made sure they had food, etc. Then we moved his truck under cover (mostly) and covered his snowmachine, and brought in a bunch of wood just in case. Then we walked out to get the mail, and we could watch the ash cloud forming, and heading for us. It was SO cool. As soon as we got back, I went and got the camera and started snapping shots. SO cool. Can't say that enough.