Welcome to the year 2012!

Hopefully everyone had a great time in the past hours as the many regions of the World entered the New Year one after the other. : ))

Wishing you all good health, weather and prosperous opportunities in the new times.

Let's begin sharing the weather wherever we may be. : )


Istanbul is rainy and gray. ( I can't upload a photo right now because I have to reinstall all of my photo-editing software to my computer but let's see your wonders.)

Yildiz

Tsatsu. Partly Cloudy 4ºc.

New years Day at Tsatsu Shores.




Guy on Honda Ruckus

It looks like there’s plenty of wood there for quite a few sausage sizzles DA, actually at 4 deg. I’d be thinking of a nice bonfire instead. If those floated in on the tides, it makes one wonder how many boating hazards there are still out there, I don’t think it would be funny to run over a log with the outboard leg.

I went down to check on the bridge late yesterday, just as I got out of the truck the sun ducked behind a massive cloud in the west and stayed there, so I had gloomy light. On the bridge itself it looks like they are building some formwork for pillars, I think being a government project the workers have disappeared for a while over the Christmas-New Year period.
Greg
A700 KM24-105

Tsawwassen. Cloudy 3ºc

Very nice shot Greg. The private sector would have the bridge finished by now, complete with toll booth. ;^)

Thanks for sharing.

I don't have a shot to post about the weather, but the national weather service agency is sounding virtual alarms about the storms that are raging across the Netherlands right now. Water is unuasually high and I just read one a dyke in one of the northern provinces is about to collapse due to the quick rise of water. Several farms and livestock are threathened. It's gonna be hell to get to the office I think... wish me luck

The usual interesting collection of "Weather today" shots DA and Greg . That bridge doesn't seem to be coming along very quickly Greg.

Hope you get to work ok Mark (or would it be better to be stranded at home .) It is windy with rain here. The forecast has some sunny spells and less rain this afternoon and so we might take a scoot around the park .

Well, fortunately, I made it in one piece You wouldn't want to get on a bicycle around here unless it's a one way trip upwind

I don't have pic to post, but right now it is 18C/65F outside!

Some would say 'global warming', but it St. Louis we just call it weather. I remember a February day about 35 years ago when we turned on the car's air conditioner on the way home from Church Sunday afternoon.

By next week we're likely to have 2 feet of snow an -10 temps!

Dusty

The bridge is a State Gov project, and it’s a low level bridge, which nobody could understand because of the large amount of boat traffic (trawlers and sailing boats) that goes through there would require a much higher one, they even forgot about the Fed Gov defence facility up river that contains a whole bunch of medium sized landing craft that wouldn’t fit under the bridge at high tide. The fishermen got a high court injunction too stop it being built for a long time until the Gov provided a new place on the Seaward side for them.
I reckon you could have made a good ‘Yes Minister’ episode on the subject.
Mark there was a doco on TV the other night about how Holland had done a marvellous job with the new boom gates and dykes but they were having a huge problem with snow/ice melt up river and more volume of fresh water coming down. There is no easy answer when you have too keep the sea out, but that also keeps the fresh water in at the same time (no choice), now it seems they were thinking of sacrificing some areas and let them flood, villages, farmland etc. and that’s not an ideal solution either, but how high can you build river levy banks without running the risk of a sudden break and a massive flood? Lots of luck…I’m wondering what’s in store in the future as well, the house I’m in here is only a few hundred metres from the sea and about four metres above high tide.
Greg

The new workshop/service shed etc. for the landing craft on the seaward side of the bridge. (file photo)

That bridge reminds me a lot of what I think of as the military mindset: extensive, careful planning to ensure against any minor glitches getting in the way of making a massive blunder!

Yep that’s a pretty apt description jcoffin, I often had too wonder how they managed to forge the road through a protected tidal mangrove area, the necessary EIS that they would have to have done by law would have surely noticed that the road was going to go through quite an extensive amount of mangrove tidal area and would alter the fresh/saltwater balance during the monsoon part of the year. I think it was because there is a new transmission line running along adjacent to the road, Powerlink has the ability to put a power transmission line and access road through anywhere they want and nobody can stop them, not even greenies, cause them a small delay on occasion…yes…but stop, no.
Now you would have to admit that was an unusual degree of interdepartmental juggling and foresight (if true)…I’m almost in awe of it actually. The bridge design is a flop but the chicanery to get it built was a tribute to civil servants everywhere.
Greg

Hmm, lots to read on weather and government politics on general construction...

Maybe I should come back later, after I read thoroughly. : ))


Greg;

I do also think that it will kind of be hard for the many boats to pass under the yet-to-be-finished bridge. Australia, with a such vivid wildlife to protect and humans to consider could have planned and designed a better bridge. At the moment, the bridge appears to my eyes as though all it will let pass under are very shallow canooes...

We'll see it through your lenses when it's abou to be fnished hopefully. : )

Thanks for saharing.

David Antony, great captures that one hates to see the end of... : )

Thank you for sharing,


Istanbul is cold, very windy, very non-stop rainy and grey...We even had some thick fog that obstructed view starting from a couple of meters away.

Yildiz

Hi Yildiz,
The low part of the bridge had me confused for a while until I learnt that it’s a temporary platform for the cranes to work from, they remove it after the real bridge is completed, (much higher) I’m not sure how they pull up all those large piles they drove in with lots of banging noises for weeks.
Greg
Townsville weather: 26.4|31.4 °C, H59%, 15|26km/h ENE|NE patchy cloud.
A700 KM24-105

I was going to put this in the bird thread, but who want's to see common Pigeons in the birdbath straight after an Avocet....
Greg
Townsville weather: 27.2|31.5°C, H58%, 15|22km/h N|ENE patchy cloud

A100 KM100-300apo
wet Pigeons

Those two give the Friarbird a run for it's money in the ugly-department