Tag Archives: storm

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Clearing Storm, Panamint Range

April 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A clearing snow storm in the Panamint Mountains above Wildrose Canyon, Death Valley National Park

I seem to have a knack for encountering “interesting” weather in Death Valley. The first time I visited the park, on an early April trip back in the late 1990s, I encountered light snow at Scotty’s Castle, an extremely cold wind storm that forced a retreat from the back-country near Teakettle Junction, and a big dust storm at Stovepipe Wells. Since then I’ve experienced a number of dust storms, heavy rain, sub-freezing temperatures, more snow, and plenty of wind. If you are hoping to visit the park for its more typical hot weather, you might want to avoid times when I’m there! Of course, I often visit around the beginning of April, and this seems to be a time of wildly varied conditions in this park—the time of wind storms, and a season when you might see the last Pacific winter storms or the first really warm weather.

On this year’s early April visit things leaned more in the direction of winter-like conditions. As a series of welcome Pacific storms came through there were plenty of clouds, cooler temperatures, strong winds, and some precipitation. The plan on this morning was to start at a very high overlook in the Panamint Range, from which expansive morning vistas are often possible. We were there before sunrise… but it was cloudy and becoming cloudier. There was enough light for some photography, but we also became aware that snow was starting to fall on some of the higher peaks. After an hour or so at this location we retreated to a high, broad, sage-filled valley and continued to watch the clouds close in and the snow spread along other nearby ridges. Not wanting to miss the unusual conditions we headed up into Wildrose Canyon, getting as far as the charcoal kilns before the falling snow convinced me that we shouldn’t go any further. We worked our way back down the canyon where the storm began to temporarily clear from the ridge of the Panamint Mountains.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mountains, Rain

April 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Rain falling from a dissipating afternoon storm is backlit above desert mountains, Death Valley National Park

This was anything but an ordinary Death Valley day—though I’m not sure that any Death Valley day is likely to be ordinary. We began very early, awakening a couple of hours before dawn. The plan was to be far up in the Panamint Mountains before sunrise, in the hope of photographing the first light over the Valley from a high and wild place. I try to assess the weather conditions in the dark in any way that I can—checking wind, looking to see if stars are visible, and so forth. In the darkness I could tell that only a few stars were visible and that their light was muted, all of which suggested cloudiness. This was, of course, in line with a weather forecast that mentioned things like showers and snow flurries and clouds. However, you can’t tell what will happen until you go out there and watch it happen, so we headed up into the mountains.

Most of the story of this day will wait for photographs of that early morning and the rest of the day in the Panamint range that followed. However, for now I will mention that it was cloudy, it was cold, and it snowed. Later in the day the weather began to clear and we saw some sun before we came back down from the mountains, with plans for an evening shoot in a different location on our minds. As we descended we noticed precipitation in the mountains to our north and west—more or less in the Cottonwood Mountains. We stopped and photographed this weather before heading down into the Valley. Our plans were changing with the weather, and we ended up heading to a high place with a good open view of much of the Valley, figuring that the changing light from the clouds might present quickly changing opportunities. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at our location we could see that the clouds over the Cottonwood range were quickly thinning, and that backlight was illuminating the last rain falling over the receding ridges of this range, creating a very bright and constantly changing effect.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

December 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Momentary sunset light on virga and clouds of an incoming late-autumn weather front above California’s San Joaquin Valley

As I mentioned in my previous post, this mid-December day was one of variable weather and sky conditions that ranged from fog to clear to mixed clouds to the arrival of a weak weather front that completely block the light at times. We spent the entire day mostly photographing migratory birds in this wetland area, but also making some landscape photographs when the birds were less available.

After a lunch break at a nearby town we returned for the afternoon and evening light and the prospective fly-in of geese and cranes. We always have an eye on the sky, trying to imagine and predict what the evening might bring, and the prospects did not look too encouraging. I love clouds… but out here too many clouds can simply kill the light that can otherwise become very interesting late in the day. As the afternoon wore on towards evening, it looked more and more like the light was perhaps not going to improve, and bands of thick clouds frequently blocked the sun, leaving mostly a sort of gray haze where we were. Occasionally the clouds did thin and we had moments of interesting light and sky, but overall things seemed to be heading in the gray direction. (This happens. If you shoot enough you will have days of utterly astonishing light, balanced by days when the light is simply blah. You make what you can from the light that you find, and usually something works.) Then, to our complete surprise, a few beams of sunset light found their way through small breaks in the clouds to our west, and for perhaps five minutes we had a light show as cloud bottoms and virga were gently lit from below, turning shades of red and pink and purple.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Snow, Hope Valley

November 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early autumn snow flurries in Hope Valley

On this early October drive across the Sierra, eventually heading for the town of Bishop, we crossed Carson Pass from west to east. The object of the drive was to photograph fall subjects on the east side of the range, but there was nothing to keep us from starting early – and we began searching out colorful autumn aspens and other subjects even before reaching the pass. Light snow started west of the pass, and when we stopped at the turn-out at the pass a decent amount of snow was falling, the wind was blowing, and it definitely felt like winter. Back in the car we started down the east side of the pass.

The snow continued as we took a short detour on a gravel side-road, then returned to the main highway to head east on highway 88 through Hope Valley. I first visited Hope Valley many years ago when I had just begun cross-country skiing, and today I often pass through on my aspen-hunting trips. The aspens were turning colors on this day, and if you look very closely you can see a very large grove of them in the distance through the snow. We briefly stopped at the turn-off to Luther Pass, where I made this photograph looking back up the creek that flows through the valley. Snow was falling and there was a thin layer of snow sticking to everything. As if to prove that photographers aren’t the only people nuts enough to stand around in the cold wind and snow, there was actually a fisherman along the creek just out of the frame to the right!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: storm

Clearing Storm, Panamint Range

Desert Mountains, Rain

Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

Autumn Snow, Hope Valley

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.