Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Clear and Cold

It was a clear, cloudless morning with a moderate temperature inversion. I kind of liked the way the sky looked as I got a ride into the university (again!) but by the time I got my camera, the moment and viewpoint passed. This was taken about an hour and a half before sunrise. I looked at the Exif data on the photo to get the time and discovered that the time zone was still set to the time zone for Tokyo. I guess I am the type that needs automation to take care of things like that when I don't remember.

I think the sky color in the first picture is closer to what it actually was. I suspect that maybe all of the sodium street lights are messing things up.  I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but the winter storm that we had last week had left ~14,000 people without power. For some, they just got power restored and I think that I read that there may be still ~1,000 without power. At these temperatures, not being able to run the boiler or furnace could be a problem. Lots of downed trees with wind gusts of 70 mph last week on Wednesday night! Weird weather.

You can clearly see the thick layer of pollution formed by the temperature inversion. Alaska is blessed by some of the cleanest air unless you visit Fairbanks during a temperature inversion. Normally, the air gets colder as your altitude increases. With a temperature inversion, the air is colder at ground level and gets warmer as you move up. An example of this is that while it is -30 something in town (down low) it was only -20°F at our house (a little bit in the hills). Normally, exhaust smoke rises towards colder. denser air but now it heads for ground level. So instead of dispersing, it gets concentrated. The air in town is extremely unhealthy during these weather conditions.

This morning, it was -27°F and has been getting colder as the day has progressed. This is not weird weather or even exceptionally cold for this time of year. Last month, I was kind of hoping to be able to ride until Thanksgiving but after the winter storm and now this, I'll pass. I remember quite a few Thanksgivings when it was well below -40°F/C and the power company having problems keeping up with the demands. Too many ovens on at the same time.

Next Tuesday evening, we will be heading for St. Paul, MN, for about a week. Hopefully, it'll be warmer than here.

BTW, I originally uploaded the first two pictures in jpeg format and the online versions looked horrible compared to the originals. Not the original RAW images but the jpegs on the local drive after exporting them from Aperture. I then exported them in png format, uploaded them and they look much better. This is the first time I've experienced this difference.

It looks like the pictures are now automatically uploaded to Google+ which then it wants to apply some sort of "auto-enhance" function which ruined the picture (in my humble opinion).

Update - Auto-enhance and auto-awesome are turned on by default. They can be disabled within your Google+ settings. The auto-awesome function is the creation of little movies when you upload a series of similar photos. Google assumes that you would've made a movie if you were smarter. (Not a Google fan in case you couldn't tell)

12 comments:

  1. Richard:

    Clear and Cold is just a matter of perspective. You are obviously Clearer and Colder than we are, but we are also Clear and Cold, perhaps the feel of our humid cold may feel colder than drier cold.

    stubborn ice to scrap this morning at below freezing. Have Fun in St Paul. I was close but I had to rush to PA but I was thinking about making the detour . . .

    Don't blame you for not riding. I have an excuse

    bob
    Riding the Wet Coast

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    1. Fortunately, we are not very humid today. And that is what is allowing the ice to disappear from the road. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be warmer so I should be able to start riding again. We'll see.

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  2. Nice moody photos. I love dawns. Cold or hot.

    I noticed that Blogger did an "auto correct" on one of my photos- one of my nice dark ones! I fooled around with it a bit and then that version disappeared. How totally ridiculous! If I want to post a near black photo I should be allowed to!

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    1. The Blogger behavior appears to be a result of attaching the blog to my Google+ profile. This moves the picture store from Blogger to Google+. I guess I don't really care as long as they don't try to "Google knows best" with my pictures.

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    2. I don't want anything to do with Google +. Maybe that's why it did the photo thing once and not again.

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    3. After a bit of searching, I found the toggle within settings for the auto-enhance function. Apparently it messes with png files as well but not as much.

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  3. That's pretty cold conditions, even though you're not labeling them as such. It was 17F on the way in today and it felt cold enough though the gear kept me warm.

    Google's auto enhance is hit or miss IMHO. I set my google settings to disable that and I've not linked the blog to google+....no plans to do so either.

    The sunrise pictures had very good color.....your temperature inversions are better than the ones here in the Front Range....you see Denver's infamous brown cloud over the city then.....funny how that never makes it into the tourism brochures.

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    1. I didn't even know about the auto-enhance function on Google until I started looking through my photo library and a little logo appeared in the upper right corner indicating that it had been auto-enhanced. I do remember thinking that the posted versions of my pictures didn't really look the same but yesterdays were the worst.

      The cold temperatures are continuing today so I didn't ride in again. -38°F this morning. It was somewhat challenging trying to convince myself to go in at all...

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  4. Google is overrated......

    The colors in those photos are beautiful. Wish our morning skies looked that way - without the inversion of course.

    Was sunny on the way in this morning. 26 degrees while waiting for the bus at 7 am. Brad took the car since he left at 5 am.

    I am pretty sure St. Paul will be a lot warmer. Even if it isn't above freezing it will still be warmer than what you are experiencing.

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    1. Google IS overrated. Very well put. The worst is the arrogance that they know what you need better than you. Apple is also guilty of that…

      Today was another clear, cold day with a beautiful blue sky. At least once the sun showed up. I'm looking forward to MN.

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  5. Minus 30 and without power for a week. winds to 70 mph. I know what I will say when people point out the perils of hurricanes in Key West.

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    1. That things could be worse? Quite a few people around here have wood heat and generators just because the power and heat are critical when temperatures drop.

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