Twin City Photos

Spring has finally arrived in Minnesota. Lawns are greening, trees are budding, birds are flirting. You can see it in the sky too. Clouds are beginning to look like they have some real moisture waiting to come down as rain, the air feels a bit humid, and unfortunately allergies are acting up for some.

Temps are going to be in the 80s today, and we’re supposed to get some thunderstorms this weekend. First of the season. I’m looking forward to it, though now I probably won’t be able to undertake another major vehicle maintenance challenge. After last weekend’s success (saving myself $500 now confirmed after getting a quote), I’m ready for another automobile repair challenge, like tackling that little leak in my truck’s transmission cooling line that apparently costs $100s to fix because ‘you have to remove many unrelated parts to get at it’. I have some ideas.

The Mississippi is in full spring melt form, roaring over the St. Anthony Falls. You see many items donated by nature floating in the river, those being primarily trees and tree sections. Small craft wisely stay out of the water, not only in this immediate area (obviously), but also further up and down stream, as it’s not the trees you can see you have to worry about, but the ones under the surface.

Unfortunately the viewing platform (on the left in the picture) is still closed for the season. Rightfully so, as we are now in the schizophrenic part of our season, with near 50 degrees and sunshine tomorrow, followed by a half of foot of snow after that.

The Red River flood threat in northern Minnesota has subsided. If interested in that story click here for link to local news.

The Mississippi is finally thawed up here. Just 3 months ago I took this very icy photo. Unfortunately for some the spring thaw brings problems, especially the folks up in Northwestern Minnesota were the Red River, which by the way flows north (one of the few to do so in the US), is predicted to reach record flood levels. Many will have their homes flooded.

Some of you may remember a while back I had a photo of a leaf trapped in the winter ice. With spring only about a week away and temperatures above freezing part of the day, the sun’s energy is soaked up by this leaf because of it’s darker color more so than by the surrounding ice, resulting in the leaf melting itself a pocket within the ice. Nature’s version of a solar collector.

After some initial problems I’ve finally managed to upgrade this blog to WordPress 2.7.1, the latest version. This hopefully is the last time I have to manually install the files, as version 2.7.1 allows you to upgrade with a single click from the admin panel.

I’ve also added a Captcha to see if I can reduce the number of spam comments I have to filter out. Frankly I’m surprised that spammers haven’t figured out a way to get through. I can envision an approach that would work, but better keep my mouth shut. Blogger users don’t have this problem, as Google is pretty effective in filtering spam comments.

These boats were photographed a while back when Roaming and Dusty and I went on an impromptu photo shoot in the uptown area, including a walk down to lake Calhoun.