Archive For The “fall” Category
The weather here in Kitimat on Saturday, November 3, 2018, was miserable, with heavy rain. I don’t often get ravens in my backyard but on Saturday morning, one landed in the mountain ash tree in my backyard to sample the berries. You can tell just how wet it was from the drips on the berries.
The raven gulps down two mountain ash berries.
Sony Alpha 55 (the camera I always keep by my backdeck) with a Tamron 70- 300.
Kitimat harbour is shrouded in fog at slack tide after what was left of Tropical Storm Oho had passed and before a new storm blew in, October 9, 2015. (Robin Rowland)
The Hawaiian hurricanes that follow the path of the “Pineapple Express” across the northern Pacific normally dwindle to rain storms by the time they reach the Kitimat Valley. On October 9, 2015, however, what was left of Hurricane Oho was still at tropical storm strength.
I was assigned by Global BC to get storm and rain pictures. There was still heavy rain when I shot my first video at the Kitimat viewpoint.
The Kitimat estuary and Minette Bay are hidden in heavy fog as rain from Tropical Storm Oho continues to fall at the Kitimat Viewpoint, Oct. 9. 2015. (Robin Rowland)
I then drove down to Hospital Beach, expecting to get some good shots of waves pounding against the shore. To my surprise, I saw Kitimat harbour as I have never seen it. It was slack tide, the water was dead calm and the fog shrouded the entire harbour. Looking over to Rio Tinto BC Operations Terminal B (the old Eurocan dock) (Robin Rowland)
Rio Tinto’s Terminal A and part of the older smelter emerge from the fog. (Robin Rowland)
The Smit tug dock. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the harbour looking toward Terminal B. (Robin Rowland)
The fog makes part of the harbour look like an alien world from a science fiction movie.(Robin Rowland)
Another view from the Hospital Beach boat launch ramp looking toward the Smit tug dock. (Robin Rowland)
Looking along Hospital Beach back toward Terminal A and the aluminum smelter. (Robin Rowland)
When I was back at my computer, filing the video to Vancouver, the rain from the second storm moving in began to pound down outside my window.
“Super” low tide on the Skeena River at Telegraph Point, Sept. 28, 2015 (Robin Rowland)
I had great plans for shooting the super moon and the eclipse blood moon on Sunday night, September 27. Unfortunately the ideal shot of the moon rising over our iconic Mt. Elizabeth (which I have captured in the past) was impossible, there was a storm blowing in, and the overcast was so heavy that dark moon wasn’t even visible.
But today, I captured the related super tide –at low tide–which is the shot, I am sure, no one was looking for. To be honest, I was trying to shoot fall colours on a gloomy day where the Skeena lives up its original in name in the language of the Tsimshian First Nation, K-shian, “water that falls from the clouds,” also translated as “river of mists” and now is colloquially called “the Misty River.”
I was amazed at the Skeena was so flat, and so low at a time when it had been raining for the past couple of days and should have been much higher.
A few hours later when I was driving back from Prince Rupert, in a pounding rain and wind storm, the river was actually higher than I had ever seen it before.
I didn’t realize what I had until I was watching the weather segment on the CBC National, and the Weather Network presenter mentioned there was a super tide. Google checks confirmed that a super tide accompanies a super moon.
Telegraph Point, on the Skeena, taken at 1135 hrs on September 28.
Telegraph Point is about 44 kilometres (27 miles) inland from where the Skeena reaches the Pacific Ocean, and the tides do reach even further inland than that. Low tide at Prince Rupert was at 0811 on Monday. There aren’t tide tables this far inland (not needed for sailors)
As I arrived for an appointment in Prince Rupert, it started to rain. By the time I had completed my appointment and had had lunch, I drove back in a wind driver rain storm. I stopped briefly at Telegraph Point and grabbed some quick shots.
This shot, roughly the same angle as the first low tide shot, was taken at 1457, just after high tide at Prince Rupert at 1426. You can’t see it in a still image, but in the river the water was moving rapidly upstream.
This was taken at 1512 from the same spot as the first low tide shot.
Another angle from Telegraph Point taken during the storm at 1512.
(All images above taken with Sony Alpha 55)
This was one of my first shots of the day, taken about 25 kilometres further upstream at 1101. (taken with Sony Alpha 6000)
Related
Shots of fall colors along the Skeena, October 16, 2014.
Tide tables for two closest points on the Skeena
Current tide for Kwinitsa Creek
Current tide for Khyex Point
Supermoon 2015 to cause highest ‘super tides’ for 19 years (Independent UK)
Late on an early November afternoon, the sun, low in the sky, shines through moss hanging from trees in a wooded area near my home in Kitimat, BC, November 9, 2014. (Robin Rowland)
After almost two months of steady rain (from late September to early November) the jet stream has moved east, for now, bringing the “polar vortex” to central and eastern North America, and clear skies and the sun (finally) to the British Columbia coast. Taken about about 20 minutes after the shot above. (Robin Rowland)