clouds

Botany Bay Boneyard Beach

One has to time one’s visit to this location carefully, otherwise you run the risk of driving an hour South from Charleston, walking the trail to the ocean, only to find that a high tide has rendered it completely impossible to access the beach. I saw a low-tide opportunity during the late afternoon yesterday and decided to pay a visit. The weather had been unsettled and was overcast in Charleston, but at this time of year it is so changeable that it was worth a try. The beach is always wonderful, and I so enjoy just being there, but the air was hazy with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, and the colors were pretty dull, so I decided to convert the images to black and white. Here are a couple.

Where the Water Meets the Sky

Sometimes, when the tide is slack and there is no breath of wind, the water so perfectly mirrors the sky that it’s hard to figure what is sky and what is water, what is physically before you and what is a mirror image. This was just one of those evenings.

Stormy Skies over Charleston

Last weekend, the South experienced an almost unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes spawned by severe thunderstorms that swept through the area. This past weekend, more severe weather was predicted, and so we all hunkered down, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. Mercifully, there were no tornadoes, just rain and some lightning. I visited a couple of my favorite city viewpoints to watch the clouds roll in, and captured these just before it started to rain. I do love Charleston!

Super Moon or Worm Moon Rise

The March 9th full moon (also called the Worm Moon by the Old Farmer’s Almanac) is this year’s second-closest full moon. According to Earthsky.org, these are the distances between Earth and the moon for the three upcoming full moon supermoons; March 9 222,081 miles away, April 8th 221,851 miles away (the closest this year), and May 7th 224,429 miles away. By contrast, the smallest and most distant full moon of the year will fall on October 31st at a distance of 252,380 miles away.

Harvest Moonrise over Lighthouse Inlet Heritage Preserve

I am a sucker for full moons, a hint of lunacy perhaps 🙂 Anyway, it was a beautiful evening with a warm breeze blowing, and it was a treat just to be out on the beach. As the moon rose, it was almost as bright as day, with the trees, dritfwood, and people casting long shadows on the sand.

The Calm Before the Storm

So today a mandatory evacuation order goes into effect for pretty much the entire southeastern coast ahead of monster storm Dorian, still a powerful category 5 hurricane after roaring through the Bahamas. As I start to pack stuff up and move things to more secure locations on higher ground, I thought I would post these images taken a couple of evenings ago out at Charleston’s Folly Beach. A few clouds scudding across the sky, but a beautiful balmy summer’s night, the calm ahead of the storm. The last stars we will probably see until the storm passes. Prayers for safety for all.

More Summer Storms

The evening storms have been providing great photo opportunities lately. I have a gadget that attaches to my camera that is supposed to trigger the shutter when lightning strikes, but for the life of me I can’t get it to work, so these shots are the result of patiently waiting for a bolt, and tripping the shutter as fast as I can on continuous shooting mode. When I’m done, I end up with hundreds of nothing images and one or two keepers. Here are last night’s keepers, this time looking out over the Stono River.