Cold – Lens Artists Challenge #73

Thanks to Tina at Travels and Trifles for this week’s Lens Artists Challenge, cold. The first day of summer is less than a week away in New Zealand so the only cold we have here right now is the  ice cream that all the strawberry places are selling. We’re at the mercy of our larger neighbour, Australia for most of our weather and when they get a heat wave, which they seem to be having far more often these days, they send it our way a few days later. The Tasman Sea takes some of the sting out before it reaches us but it’s still been a very warm spring.

But up until Christmas, the weather is often changeable and it’s not unusual to have a fire going on Christmas Day. I remember the only time as a child our family decided to spend Christmas Day at the beach. We ended up eating Christmas dinner  in the back of the station wagon when a hail storm swept through.

We felt the edge of a hail storm just the other day. My friend who lives at the bottom of our hills was deluged, we had about a dozen hail stones drop on us.

In September, we cruised to Glacier Bay in Alaska where we watched the Margerie Glacier calving into the sea. One of the few glaciers still advancing, the Margerie grows about 30 feet (9 meters) a year. It’s difficult to gauge it’s size, but that wall of ice is about 150 feet or 45 meters high (think a 14 storey building). And don’t be fooled by the blue sky, a cold, cold wind blew off the the ice. It felt a bit like being in a fridge.

The water at the foot of the glacier was a freezing slurry.

A glacial iceberg.

Seals on ice.

We live in a small valley surrounded by native forest and protected from cold winter southerlies. But that shelter means frost settles on us. The month of July is our coldest and looks a lot like this. Luckily, frosty mornings are usually followed by blue sky days.

Our humble residence for the years we spent building our house. Visiting the outhouse on mornings like these was a bit of an adventure.

Frost flowers form on the grass in winter and you crunch, crunch, crunch across leaving deep footprints.

A water leak turns into stalactites on a fence.

What does cold look like in your part of the world?