A Little Taste Of Winter – But More Than Enough!

Kathy & I made a couple of trips north over the last few weeks, but I’ll talk about the most recent one first. This past weekend we ventured to Ohio to see some of our family and friends before the holidays. It was supposed to be a 7 day trip, but the threat of severe winter weather chased us back south after 4 days. There are a few folks we didn’t get to see, but will try again in the spring. In Ohio, spring is May! 😉

We know that planning a trip north any time after Thanksgiving involves the possibility of nasty weather, but we decided to take the chance. Prior to leaving home, the forecasts showed us that it would be cold – low temperatures in the teens and highs in the twenties, but didn’t talk much about snow, other than the chance of flurries. No big deal, right? We were fine until Saturday afternoon when the Winter Storm Warnings went up, threatening 6-10″ of the dreaded Lake Effect Snow, below-zero wind chills and blowing & drifting. Like a pilot friend of mine used to say, “let’s make a 360 and get out of here!” 🙂 So we did.

Now, it’s been 31 years since we left Ohio for North Carolina, and while we used to shrug off forecasts like that we’ve gotten very accustomed to the more favorable weather in the south. We start getting the jackets out when the temperatures drop into the 40s! I have a lined coat that worked great for anything other than the worst winter weather in Ohio, but we gave up the down parkas and ski clothes years ago. Probably 31 years ago!

By the way, weird things happen to cars in cold weather, especially cars “born” in the south. My windshield washers froze, my tire pressure monitor went wacky, the car struggled to start and took forever to warm up. Fortunately I had the foresight to have my battery tested – and replaced – before we went! And as soon as we got far enough south to get above freezing, everything went back to normal.

I did manage to sneak in a little photography in Sharon, PA, the town where I was born and spent my first 22 years. One night after dinner with our friends Jim & Lisa we drove through Buhl Farm Park and photographed the Christmas lights. The centerpiece of the park is a fishing lake and the 100+ year old “Casino.” It’s not a casino in the modern day gambling use of the word, but is called the “casino” because back in the day the term was used to refer to place of gathering. The pictures would have been lovely with lake reflections, but the lake had frozen over and was covered with snow, so no reflections. 🙁

Technically,  I was shooting in near darkness without a tripod, and an ISO of 6400 is really noisy, even with the fancy sensor in my new Fujifilm X-E5. I used the “Denoise” function in Lightroom which does an amazing job, but some of the photos still show a lot of artifacts. I left them in though, since the white specks kind of look like snow!