The Douglas County EM Severe Weather Symposium went quite well.  Speakers were myself, Jennifer Stark (the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at Topeka), Jon Davies, and Chris Novy.  At the end of the symposium was a roundtable discussion centered around topics such as the new Storm-based warnings by the National Weather Service and other topics such as "tornado emergencies".  It’s always great to have a discussion like this among the spotter community (the audience), National Weather Service meteorlogists like myself, and on-camera meteorologists from the local media.  Several representatives from the Topeka and Kansas City market were there including Joe Lauria and Bryan Busby.  I’ll make another brief post tomorrow when I get home in the morning and perhaps add another couple images from the Utah trip. 

Mesa Arch morning (Canyonlands NP), Arches NP afternoon/evening

Day2 of photography in Arches and Canyonlands was another success.  Theday began with a morning shoot at Mesa Arch, another classic and iconiclandscape photography location within Canyonlands NP. "The shot" isalways immediately after sunrise as the warm early morning sunlightstrikes beneath the underbelly of the arch illuminataing it in a fieryred hue.  This morning, however, this fiery red color only lasted verybriefly as there were nuisance high cirrus (some of it rather thick andopaque) right in the way.  There was only one other photographer therefor the sunrise shoot, which is pretty good for this location.  Theother photographer that was there with me mentioned that this is thequietest of the 3 trips he had made (in terms of number ofphotographers).  This allowed for freedom of movement around the archfor different compositions.  After that, the good light faded, and Idrove to Grand View Point at Canyonlands just to the south of MesaArch.  What a view indeed!  I’ll likely be heading to Canyonlands fortomorrow morning sunrise (actually probably Dead Horse Point State Parkright near there).  For the late morning and the middle part of theday, I came back to the motel room and slept for a couple hours thengrabbed lunch at Zax pizza place on Main Street.  After that, I headedinto Arches for late afternoon/evening photography.  The lion’s shareof time was spent around Balanced Rock area where there is a fantasticview of the distant "Windows" section against the distant snowy LaSalMountains.  Overall a good day with a few truly nice keepers for sure.

Thereis a storm coming.  This has thrown a wrench into thingsunfortunately.  I will not be staying in Moab through Thursday morningfor I do not want to drive back through the Colorado Rockies amidst abunch of snow on my originally planned "driving through Colorado" dayThursday.  The storm will be taking a rather southern route, thus havebeen thinking all afternoon how to play this one.  Initially, I thoughtI would just drive back to Dodge tomorrow, arriving late Wednesdaynight.  After giving this some thought, have decided I don’t want tohead back to Dodge yet.  I’m on vacation and for me vacation meansstaying away from Dodge.  Thus, the new plan is this:  After sunriseshoot (depending on cloud cover) in either Canyondlands area or Arches,I will leave the area and head in a general northeast direction.  Ithink I will head up into far southern Wyoming (I-80 corridor) and justtake a leisurely trip east for the next couple of days before arrivingin Lawrence, KS on Friday afternoon.  By doing this, I will stay awayfrom the weather, even though it will likely be quite cold.  I can dealwith the cold, but I don’t like driving in the weather, and rushingback to beat the weather to Southwest Kansas.  Sooo.. I think tomorrownight I may just settle into the Rawlins, WY area on I-80.  ThenThursday, would take a leisure drive through the rest of easternWyoming into southwestern Nebraska… shacking up along I-80 in theNorth Platte or Kearney areas.

Colorado Nat’l Monument to Arches Nat’l Park

I’m very tired after a long day, so I’ll make this brief.  I arrived in Moab around 11:30 or so after leaving Fruita, CO during the mid-morning hours.  I photographed sunrise scenes at Colorado Nat’l Monument up until shortly after sunrise with some success.  I drove along Hwy 128, which is highly scenic red canyon terrain along the Colorado River, on the way to Moab/Arches.  At Arches, did an initial drive through the park, stopping at a few of the pullovers and overlooks, including some arches.  About 2 hours prior to sunset, I started my way towards Delicate Arch, the iconic arch of Utah and the Southwest.  There is a 3-mile round trip hike which is fairly strenuous, especially carrying my heavy photography pack.  The trail goes over large slickrock, fairly steep in some spots.  Leading up to the arch itself, the trail is in shadow, and was very icy and slick.  This wasn’t fun to walk over for sure… especially being fairly elevated.  Nevertheless, I got to the final destination, and it was worth the hassle on the ice.  Just prior to sunset, Delicate Arch glows a reddish hue against a polarized blue sky and the La Sal Mountains to the southeast.  By the time I got back to the car, it was getting dark.  I wasn’t finished though!  The moon is near-full right now, and I stayed in the park until about 8:30pm photographing some awesome scenes around the "Windows" section of Arches.  North and South Window in the bright moonlight was just awesome.  I was able to pull off some memorable long-exposures.  This little shoot itself in the moonlight after dark made the trip!  Attached to this blog is one of those images showing both North and South Window against the full moonlight.  I am in Moab now for the next 3 nights.  Tomorrow’s plan is much the same, spent photographing around Arches.  More tomorrow night!

EDIT 12:20am MST:  Added a photo!

Tomorrow, I have a talk scheduled at 8:00am on digital photography techniques.  After that, sometime around 10:00am or so, I’ll begin heading west on I-70 towards Colorado National Monument and Grand Junction.  I’ll post again tomorrow evening at that location!