Midnight Rainbow

Friday evening we had quite a bit of rain.  I was getting into bed shortly before midnight when a heavy rain shower started.  There was sunlight peeking under the shades so I peeked out.  There was  a lovely full rainbow arcing across the sky. 

Well, needless to say it was a while until I got to bed.

 I grabbed my camera and went out onto the deck.

It was raining fairly heavily so I stayed under the covered area on our deck to keep my camera dry.  I wanted to stay dry too--did I mention I was in my bathrobe?

I could not quite get all of the rainbow in one shot.

Looking to the west you can see the blue sky and the sun shining on the edge of the storm cloud.

Midnight at this time of year can be full of surprises.

Midnight Sun

On the way home from the Midnight Sun Festival on Sunday night I took a few shots of the sun going down.  Sunset is not for another hour at 12:47 a.m., but the sun was sinking below the hills.  The last shot was at home, shortly after midnight. 

While we are thoroughly enjoying all our daylight, there's a bittersweet element.  Today we've already lost a minute of daylight, and it's all downhill from here until December 21st.  However, in the meantime we've got a whole lot of daylight to cram a whole lot of activities into!

Dragonflies and Midnight Skies

It's the time of year when we're seeing lots of dragonflies.  The Four-spotted Skimmer is one of the first to emerge in the spring.  We're especially glad to see the dragonflies emerge because they eat mosquitoes, a critter we have in abundance.

I added a poster edge in the photo below to highlight the lovely patterns in the dragonfly's wings.

We are at the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  We have 21 hours and 49 minutes between sunrise and sunset, and it doesn't get dark in those few hours in between.  The photos below were taken at midnight.  Lots of activities are going on this weekend, including a 10k Midnight Sun Run, a Minor League baseball game starting at 10:00 p.m. with no artificial lights, a Midnight Sun Festival on Sunday, and many, many more activities celebrating the long hours of daylight.

I'm linking up with Skywatch

and Eileen's Saturday Critters.

Late Afternoon Sky

 This afternoon as the sun was working its way down, the contrast of the blue sky, the white clouds, and the dark outlines of the trees caught my eye.  The first three photos were taken a bit before 5:00.

The mood changed a bit 45 minutes later as the sun  sunk behind the hills.

No, there is no snow on the ground and although it's cooled off a bit, temperatures are still above normal and will be in the low 40s through the weekend.  Next week snow is predicted, but with daytime temperatures above freezing it's hard to say if it will stick.  We are wondering if we're going to have a white Halloween--not something most people expect, but here we do.  The only time there hasn't been a white Halloween was back in 1938 when it took until November 6th to get an inch of snow, and in 1969 it snowed on Halloween.  Will records be broken this year?  I'll let you know.

Fiery Sky

A smoky haze hangs in the skies due to several wildfires in the area.  We've had temperatures in the 80s and low 90s and conditions are very dry, the perfect recipe for forest fires.  Shortly after 10:00 p.m., the sun sinking behind the trees on the hills behind my house reflected off of the haze and made for a colorful sky.

Cropping and texture seem to set the trees on fire.  

We could use a nice rainy day!

The Downhill Slide to Winter Begins

Taken at 11:55 p.m. Thursday night, the two photos below were 52 minutes shy of sunset, which occurred at 12:47 a.m. Friday morning.  After a week of temperatures in the mid to upper 80s with clear skies, a few clouds moved in with a very light rain shower.

The color intensified a bit after midnight, but sunset is still over a half hour away.

Sunrise will be at 2:59 a.m., giving us 21 hours and 48 minutes of daylight.  It won't get dark between sunset and sunrise though.

Thursday at 9:04 p.m., according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Earth experienced the moment of the summer solstice.  That's the point in time when the northern half of the Earth's axis reaches its greatest tilt toward the sun and then begins its slow return to perpendicular on the autumnal equinox in September.  That means that winter is officially on its way!

Looking away from the sky, the photo of the flowers was taken at 12:09 a.m.

Fairbanks celebrates the summer solstice in a big way.  Friday night the Midnight Sun baseball game will begin at 10:30 p.m., with the Alaska Goldpanners playing the San Francisco Seals in the 108th staging of this event.  Saturday night the 10K Midnight Sun Run will start at 10:00 p.m., with thousands of participants either running or walking, many of them in costume.  Sunday the Midnight Sun Festival will take place from noon to midnight.  The downtown street fair will have hundreds of booths and 33 live music and dance performances.  Many other events will also take place, like the Midnight Sun Hockey Tournament that my husband is playing in, and many other sporting events.  After a long winter, everyone is ready to cram as much as possible into summer!  After all, we're going to begin losing daylight now.....

Afternoon Winter Skies

These shots were taken over the last several days.

Partly Sunny

Yesterday the temperature rose to above zero for the first time since December 24th.  This afternoon there was a bit of sun peeking through the clouds, and it was a balmy 5 degrees.  So I took the long way around when I went to the grocery store and took a few photos.  The photos were all taken around 1:00 p.m., and I added a rough pastel texture to the header photo.

Tonight the prediction is for more snow, and then tomorrow back down to 20 to 40 below.  Well, it is January.....

The View from the Barn

After shooting some photos of the barn in the last post, I turned around and took a look at the beautiful view from the barn. It was a little after 1:00 in the afternoon, and it was really much lighter than it appears in the photos, but since I was shooting right towards the sun it threw everything else into shadow.

Our low sun angles at this time of year create some beautiful skies.

As we continued on down the road after stopping at the old barn, I continued to shoot photos of the sky as we were driving.

The road winds around a bit, and it seemed there was another beautiful view around every curve in the road.

These photos were all taken within about a 10 minute period.

When I see these gorgeous skies in the winter it seems to me that it is the promise of summer. We have already gained a half hour of daylight from December 21st and the gain today was four minutes. In the Far North we live in a land of extremes, from cold winters and darkness to warm summers and endless daylight. It's like living in two different places.