Thunderstorm Over Lake Erie

We decided to go for a walk at Mentor Headlands State Park on the dunes trail. The sun was shining as we entered the parking lot but we noticed a patch of dark clouds looking over Lake Erie to the west. We were on the dunes trail for only a few minutes when we heard loud thunder and turned to see that the dark clouds had ballooned into a very large thunderstorm. Here’s a photo, taken from the dunes trail, looking west.(Click in image for a larger view.)

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Red-Shouldered Hawk In Flight

My husband spotted a pair of red-shouldered hawks sitting in a tree in the front yard. As I tried to get a photo, one of them flew over to a neighboring stand of trees. Here are photos of this beautiful bird as it flies by = slightly blurry from its motion.

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At The Icy Eastlake Pier

We visited the Eastlake Ohio seawall and fishing pier this morning. The temperature was 11 degrees and it was cloudy and breezy. The walk to the pier was treacherous because of ice. However, the Lake Erie water near the pier is unfrozen due to the warm water discharge from the Eastlake power plant. It’s normally a good place to see birds when it’s cold; unfortunately, it was even too cold for the birds. We saw few ducks and a handful of gulls, all which were out of the range of my long lens. We did see a lesser black-backed gull among a few herring gulls. Otherwise, it was an uneventful visit. There was some steam coming off the water but it only made the scene look even more frosty. Here’s a photo. (Click on image for a larger view.)

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A Frozen Lake Erie and Frozen Waves At Mentor Headlands

It was zero degrees at about 4:00 PM this afternoon, so what better time to head to the beach? It was bitterly cold with heavy snow cover, and Lake Erie is 98% frozen.  The whiteness was blinding. Here are two photos taken at Mentor Headland Beach State Park on the shores of Lake Erie. The mounds on the shoreline were frozen waves which made for at least a 5 foot drop to the lake itself. (Click on any image for a larger view.)

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Chagrin River Park: Man-Made Beauty

The sun finally came out after what seemed like an endless streak of gloomy weather. We decided to take a walk in Chagrin River Park, which is part of the Lake Metroparks. There was still plenty of snow cover so there wasn’t much to see except a frozen Chagrin River, bare trees, and dormant vegetation.  I decided to try to find something visually interesting in the man-made scenery in and around the park. The pedestrian bridge makes for a nice view of the Chagrin River, but it was the bridge itself that stood out from all the ice and snow. The stairs to the sledding area brought some visual interest to the blank white of the hill. And, the nearby towers for the high tension power lines looked like metal giants walking through the cold, open space. Here are a few photos.

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Diamond Dust Snow

This morning, it was about 15 degrees with a bright, sunny sky. There were tiny ice crystals flying through the air, making “diamond dust” snow. I managed to catch some of this weather phenomenon on video. The ice crystals were only visible when looking at them directly into the run, otherwise, it looked like perfectly clear air. In the video, some crystals look large but I think this is just the camera catching the flashes of light as the crystals flew past the lens.




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A Pileated Woodpecker Visits

This afternoon, a female Pileated Woodpecker was pounding away on some of the pine trees in our yard. I was fortunate enough to grab a quick photo before this lovely, large bird flew into more dense cover.

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