Weather or Not

Weather or Not — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/60

Strange weather has brought itself to New Jersey. In typical Mid-Atlantic March fashion we’ve seen all four seasons this month and we’ve yet to cross the Ides of March. Yesterday we saw temps approach 70 while today much of the state was greeted with slippery roads and heavy wet snowfall. Once this morning’s system moved through some snow squalls began to fire across the region—even with reports of thunders snow in Pennsylvania! You may be looking at the photograph above thinking huh, that sure looks like a thunderstorm and you wouldn’t be far off base. Snow squalls, unlike most other types of winter events, are caused from instability in the atmosphere—the same kind of dynamics that drive thunderstorms in spring and summer—unstable air with plenty of room for atmospheric lifting and you’ve got the same kind of setup, only here you’re greeted with a brief period of heavy snow.

In between about four rounds of intense snowfall over a 60 minute span, I was able to hop out of the car and make some photographs of what was a full stop dynamic sky. It’s no exaggeration to say every five minutes rendered an entirely different palette of clouds, color, and light. It was something to behold, albeit intense and cold. Considering the speed with which I needed to move around the old marina, I ditched the tripod and went exclusively handheld today. You’ll note the ISO 400 with this photograph as I needed to speed up my shutter to get to an exposure of 1/60 so as not to risk blurring the photograph with unsteady hands. I switched between my phone when the snow was heaviest, and my main camera when the precipitation stopped and the light came out to play. I’ll be posting a few more shots from this evening over the next few days, but I figured it best to get things started with the heavy hitter from a dramatic light perspective.

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