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2010 Challenge - 3/23/2010 - Spring Storm 2

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This was taken today at work. I was at a meeting at the Student Health Clinic. This is overlooking one of the parking lots. Taken at about 2:30pm. As you can see it started as rain.

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I am being driven back to my office through campus by a coworker. Still rain, but turning to snow (the wet and slushy kind.) This is about 3:15pm. Precip turned rapidly to snow.

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I leave my office at 3:38pm as I can see that weather conditions are worsening rapidly and that the storm is heading in the same direction that I am - south. I arrive home in Erie after 1.5 hours of white knuckle driving. Meade and North of Longmont were very bad. And once I got to Erie conditions were appalling - very little visibility, standing water/ice/slush so cars were aqua planing (something that Coloradans don't normally experience.) Also temps were dropping rapidly so the standing water was developing an icy crust. And all the while the snow kept on coming down. One thing that I never really thought about is that it is very disconcerting to have snow been driven horizantally directly at you. It made me feel as if I was driving backwards - optical illusion. My front windshield was starting to get stuck with the stuff - including my windshield wipers, side mirrors etc. So that made for even worse driving conditions especially since you can't stop safely to get out and brush everything off. But I managed to get home to Erie in one piece. This photo was taken at about 5:10pm in Old Town.

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This is my photo of the day. As you can see the bush is trying to bud. The snow is wet, slushy and very sticky. Sometimes the snow here is so dry it never does anything interesting to the plants.

Shot with the Canon Powershot S3. 1/320 f/4.5 49.6mm

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It really didn't take long for the snow to start accumulating on our parked cars. In fact the snow was falling so fast, and accumulating so quickly I didn't bother putting up my car snow windshield cover. Instead I just popped up the wipers, so that I don't have to crack the rubber trying to unstick them from the windshield.


2010 Challenge - 3/20/2010 - Prairie Dog

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1/320 f/8.0 72mm Canon Powershot S3 IS.

Prairie dogs are pesky plague infected critters. The only thing I like about them is that burrowing owls sometimes use prairie dog colonies as nesting holes. This was shot out the window of our car as we passed by a cheeky pesky prairie dog colony. Too close to civilization to attract burrowing owls.