We’ve been here in Seattle 2.5 months, and we finally got around to taking a ferry to Bainbridge Island this past Saturday.  We’ve had unusually nice, mostly sunny  weather for the past week or so. It was a more typical Seattle day on Saturday, though.

Some might call it gray, but I’ll call it atmospheric.

View of Seattle from the ferry before we left Seattle; there are mountains in the distant fog

Still, you can get a nice view of the skyline from the ferry, even when it’s gray — er, atmospheric.

Seattle, straight head

Seattle Skyline

Zooming in on the Seattle Skyline

It was interesting that from Bainbridge island, you don’t see the whole skyline, at least not from the ferry landing. Here’s a shot taken just before the ferry started moving:

Artistically toned view from Bainbridge Island

Also, the rain left behind a puddle or two that I spotted on the ferry deck on the way back. So, even if the weather wasn’t ideal, finding a reflection in a puddle is never bad.

Puddle on the Ferry

Puddle on the Ferry – #2

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P.S. I used to watch the tv sitcom Frazier back in the day. At the beginning, a graphic “sketched” the Seattle skyline.

Screenshot from Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-SFhhnBwdA

I’m not sure if the skyline in Frazier is actually possible.  The little pointed tower is far over to the right in the real skyline when seen from the ferry, which puts it at the opposite end of the city from the Space Needle. It’s hard to understand where you’d have to be to get the pieces put together that way, since the tower and the Needle are so far apart in reality. But maybe I just haven’t been to the right place in town to see that. Or maybe there’s just a little artistic license going on in that graphic. Anyway, FWIW, I’ve linked that screenshot to a video that someone put together of all the variations in that opening graphic on Frazier. I had no idea that the opening graphic had so many different things happening in it, but there are balloons, moons, helicopters, etc. Fun!

So  yesterday we had a doozy of a thunderstorm that lasted most of the afternoon; the rain was so heavy that it made me abandon all thoughts going out to do any errands.

The aftermath of the storm this morning, though, was lots of leftover spots of water.  I.e. there were lots of puddles all over the place. Yay! I abandoned thoughts of doing my chores and errands when Chris alerted me to all the puddles this morning,  preferring to dash out to snap a few photos on the side road near our building. So,  in “honor” of the massive thunderstorms we’ve been having this week, today I  present some  puddle shots taken this morning.

Enjoy.

Playful Palms,  Photo #1, Melbourne FL

Playful Palms,  Photo #2 Melbourne FL

“Dissolving” Palm, Melbourne, FL

Palm Fronds, Melbourne, FL

The following photo doesn’t fit with today’s “puddle palms” theme, but I found it intriguing , so I thought I’d go ahead an include it here. It’s not a double-exposure, although it kind of looks like that effect. But it was a real reflection in a very shallow puddle, with the deliberate use of a camera setting trick to get the sign not to be very clear. Kind of fun to stumble on the right conditions for the potential for this effect:

Magic Number Revealed

Now on Saturday, we got to see the effect of several “scattered showers” as the weather report predicted, which were fortunately not nearly as bad as a hurricane. Indeed, the first one was actually “scattered” – i.e., here for a bit, with a bunch of rain, and then gone.  The second one, though, was a real humdinger of a storm: thunder, lightening, and so much rain that we could barely make out our condo’s building from the restaurant we had gone to across the street. Luckily, we made it to the restaurant before the store hit, but then it really hit with a vengeance. In fact, during that second storm, the rain was almost horizontal at times due to the suddenly amazingly strong winds. There were also picture-perfect lighting strikes not-so-far-off in the distance.

But did I get a photo of any of that? Well, no, of course not. I was too busy trying to eat slowly to make sure we didn’t have to leave the restaurant during the storm…

So the only photos I took that day had nothing to do with the storms themselves as they were happening. Rather, my photo is of the aftermath of the first storm. Because, of course, the one good thing about rainstorms is the fact that they leave a lot of water behind.

The Puddle after the Storm- Photo 1, Melbourne 2015

The Puddle after the Storm – Photo 2, Melbourne 2015

Yup, you probably guessed it. Both of those are reflections in a puddle, of course.  I may have changed countries, but some habits are hard to break….