This week the subject of the Qurator's Photo Quest is STORMS. What were they thinking?! I'm not going outside when it's storming! Besides risking your life you also risk your photo equipment to get wet. No, when it's storming I stay inside. When the weather forecast indicates a yellow, orange, or red alert, I don't go outside.
But sometimes I get caught off guard by changing weather. I'm a cyclist and I go for quite some long rides sometimes. Rides over 50 kilometers aren't an exception. There rides take a couple of ours and cover great distances. Dark clouds are forming and you get, as we say it: "threatening skies". The goal when you see this is to ride as fast as you can to the light 😀
The image above shows a picture I took during one of those rides. A storm was forming above my head and I was destined to escape the storm and rushed to the light. Unfortunately I didn't make it dry that day.
We live quite close to the beach. Sometimes when a storm is coming it's nice to go to the beach a couple of hours before the storm. You can feel the wind getting stronger. You sometimes have to lean forward to be able to move ahead. Wearing a scarf is advisable since the loose sand hurts in your face. It's exciting to feel the power of the wind. But it's not advisable to go on the beach during a storm. When you go for a walk the day after a storm you are often able to find interesting things that have washed up on the shore.
A couple of year ago I went cycling in the Vosges with some friends. When we made a ride we saw dark clouds starting to form. From my experience in the Alpes I know that these clouds don't go away easily when they are hanging in between the mountains. When the rain breaks loose the clouds need to be emptied before they disappear. We knew we had to rush to get back to our chalet. You don't want to be climbing or even worse descending in a rainstorm.
We didn't make it completely dry, but we did manage to be inside before it really broke loose.
I'm also commuting frequently from to work and back home. It's a 35/40 minute ride and I usually pay attention to the weather before I get on the bike in the morning.
But when I need to get back home I sometimes have to cycle in the rain. Yes, I can take the train, but then my bicycle is at work and I also have to get home from the train station, so I usually choose to go cycling anyways.
But sometimes you really get in a storm. This time (when I took the photo below) I sought shelter under a viaduct. It was raining so hard that I couldn't even see where I was going. As you can see the drainage couldn't handle the large amount of rain. The strong wind created horizontal rain which caused that I couldn't see anything anymore. Despite the fact that I was already soaked, I had to wait until the storm was over.
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