Summer 2011 - Skies

I returned from my trip to the Surface Design Conference in the middle of June and that is when the summer weather finally arrived in southern Alberta. From that point on my husband and I were out at our cabin during the week and home in Calgary on the weekends. It is consistently 5c degrees warmer than town and in its own little micro-climate - a great place to laze away the summer days.

Watching the prairie skies over the past couple months is one my highlights of prairie living... Here are some shots, and of course the cloudy (pre-rain) ones are best.

The above photos are all from a single trip - a one hour drive heading east of Calgary.

These two are from a +33 Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) hot summer day, one month later.

And below, more hot summer days...

A couple of weeks after that was this most amazing sight - it was either a cloud just forming, or just dissipating - it was like someone was erasing it from the sky! I have never seen anything like it before!!

Spring???

I went west last weekend for my first trip out of Calgary since September (health reasons) and it was so wonderful to get away from the snow here and extra long winter and head to the greenness of British Columbia.

I was in Vancouver for 5 days, the forecast for which was solid rain, but in reality we never felt a drop of rain the very many times we went out for shopping trips to various trendy areas. Stayed a 20 walk away from Granville Island and the market; hit West 4 Avenue for latest goodies in boots, scarves and kitchenware; and then onto Commercial Avenue for the interesting eclectic mixture in the old hippie area.

These photos show the contrast:

March 26, Vancouver
- their spring is late too and the cherry trees were just popping out in blossoms this weekend.

March 28, Calgary
- meanwhile I had to come back to all this snow but the chinook winds are coming and now the water is running down every hill in copious amounts. But the forecast is for more snow this coming weekend...