Here are two different views of the Sun. The first was taken with a 500mm telephoto lens and solar filter; numerous sunspots are visible.
The second image was taken with a 17mm wide-angle lens. Both an Oval Circumscribed Halo (visible as the thickened midsection) and 22° Halo are visible in this image.
The upside to the epic Winter we recently experienced is the tremendous amount of snow melt that filled many of the lakes across northern Arizona. Over the past several weeks we have visited several of these by car, mountain bike, running, and hiking.
This is one of my favorites. It shows Upper Lake Mary, a portion of the spillway, and Lower Lake Mary. It’s also nice that there is a nice mirror reflection of the trees in the water. This shot is only possible when both lakes are full.
Earlier we had visitied Marshall Lake. It’s not as full as it was a few years ago but considerably better than the past several years.
We did a trail run along the Arizona Trail on top of Anderson Mesa and visited Prime Lake and Vail Lake, both with lots of water.
Here are some additional images of Lake Mary taken on various days in April.
We rode our mountain bikes up Schultz Pass Road to Schultz Tank. It has been a small puddle the past two seasons but is once again full.
Finally, we did a short hike through the upper portions of Pumphouse Wash to this set of cascades.
The snow melt is done and we are now in our dry season. Lake levels and stream flows will diminish until the summer rainy season starts in July.
On a warm day a few weeks ago we traveled down to the lower elevations and visited Agua Fria National Monument. We wanted to see if there were many wildflowers (there were) and to see the high water moving down the Agua Fria River.
With the warm weatherand rapid snow melt experienced this week in Flagstaff it might not be too long before we see wildflowers blooming here.
This Winter has been relentless with snowfall now at about 200% of normal for Flagstaff. Many of these storms have made it difficult to get to various locations for shooting photos of the weather. Fortunately, the last few storms have allowed me to do some pre-dawn travel to favorite locations.
The first two photos are from the morning of 16 March 2023 when I thought there was a good chance of low clouds and fog in Grand Canyon. In fact, there was too much fog and I was only able to briefly see into the canyon while at Lipan Point. I finally moved westward to Moran Point where there was a larger break in the fog allowing sunlight to illuminate the canyon.
A week later we had a snow-turning-to-rain event that left the roads relatively easy to travel and I ventured out to Mormon Lake on the morning of 23 March 2023. The abundance of moisture over the previous few days resulted in lots of fog in low-lying basins including Lake Mary and Mormon Lake. Clear skies to the east allowed the rising sun to illuminate the San Francisco Peaks in the distance.
I was also interested in capturing images with a Glory/Brocken Spectre and fogbows. Both were faintly visible in some of the photos where I was above the fog. A better fogbow photo was shot when I was in the fog.
And here is a time-lapse video of the swirling fog in the Mormon Lake basin.
Time-lapse video of fog swirling in Mormon Lake basin.
The medium-range forecasts indicate that Winter is not yet done.
The evening sky has provided opportunities in February and early March to view several planets grouped together. In mid February there was an alignment of four planets and one asteroid: Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Vesta. Only two of these were visible with the unaided eye but even a short exposure on a camera showed the other three objects. Okay…some of them were still hard to see.
A short time later the Zodiacal Light became prominent along with some faint airglow bands near the horizon.
In early March the planets Venus and Jupiter were very near each other in the evening sky. Cloudy skies prevented me from getting photographs at their closest approach but a few days later I was able to capture these images from Bonito Park near Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.