SUNRISE – BAY CITY, WI

After consulting The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Skyfire app it appeared as though there would be a great chance for some color at sunrise this morning at one of my favorite locations – Bay City.

While driving from Red Wing to Bay City, my optimism for color was not increasing. When I arrived at the Bay City campground, there was a bit of color on the horizon out over the bay.

As you can see from the above photo, the cloud cover was dominating the scene. Even though it was in the single digits and quite cold, I stuck around. Clouds can shift and conditions can change rapidly. I capture three different [mostly gray] panorama via my drone.

I am always fascinated by the patterns in the snow and ice.

It didn’t look like the sunrise was going to amount to much. I put my drone away, but hung around a little longer. The sun tried a bit more to break through, but didn’t really completely. I took a couple photos with my iPhone and then there was nothing but gray.

How Skyfire app works

Skyfire forecasts are displayed as a map overlay with varying colors to indicate the type of conditions and forecast probability of a colorful sunrise or sunset. Colorful conditions arise when there are clouds in the sky that are underlit by the sun when it is near the horizon.

Although it is possible to see colorful clear skies, these colors are typically associated with twilight conditions (such as the ‘Belt of Venus’ or the deep blue/orange colors of nautical twilight). Skyfire forecasts do not cover these phenomena.

Clear skies, that is, where there are expected to be no clouds to underlight, are not assigned a color. Cloudy, overcast conditions, where the extent of the clouds precludes the chance for underlighting, are shown as white.

When cloud cover is broken, or lies at the edge of a weather front, there is a chance of colorful underlighting. The probability of a colorful sunrise or sunset developing is indicated on a color spectrum ranging from blue/green to red, where the redder the color, the higher the probability, as shown in the table below:

Clear	Clear skies forecast
Cloudy	Overcast, with little chance of underlighting
50% (blue)	Clouds with some chance of underlighting
70% (yellow)	Clouds with a good chance of underlighting
90% (red)	Clouds with a high chance of underlighting

AS THE WATER RECEDES | Part 2

I wanted to provide an update on a previous post, AS THE WATER RECEDES – Bay City, WI #plasticpolution. Earth Day seemed like a great time to do so.

The water was receding and making progress, but snow melt in Northern Minnesota and recent rains has the water level on the rise once again. I’ve made several trips to Bay City since cleanup effort on Saturday April 6th, watching and waiting for the water level to go down. The Village of Bay City has made great efforts in cleaning up the debris that washed ashore at Saratoga Park.

Before

After

It was happy to see that only traces of garbage remain.

Before

After

If you were ever looking for a bit of driftwood, I would think now would be the perfect time to find whatever shape/size you desire. There are numerous piles that have been gathered up.

Driftwood

What boggles my mind though is there was a fresh Mountain Dew can laying on the side of the road. I still struggle with what goes through the mind of the individual that discards a soda can. It isn’t that difficult to recycle.

Discarded soda can

It was encouraging to see that the campground area was mostly devoid of trash. During the mechanical clean up, more worm and snuff containers turned up. There is a whole lot of natural debris; cleaning that up will take some work. If only one could snap their fingers to change the hearts and minds of those who seeming don’t give a hoot. It’s a process. Tell people how you feel about this sort of thing; make your opinion known whenever and where ever you can. Plastic pollution is terrible, it’s ugly and it horrible for the wildlife.