It's all in the detail

[Tronhard]

We have been having embarrassingly good weather here, in fact we are over five months into a dry spell, the worst in living memory. In Auckland, a city of about 1.5 million, our reservoirs are down to about 45%, so we need rain - lots of it for a long time.

Yesterday and today we got a taste of that with heavy squalls, thunder and the odd hailstone event.


Canon EOS 60D, EF-S 18-135 IS STM @50mm, f/7.1, 1/60 sec, ISO-320

One interesting thing about weather in this photo. From the bending of the trees at the back it is obvious that wind is very strongly blowing right to left, but the rain in the foreground appears to be coming from the left.

I think this is a combination of possibly several things: swirling effect caused by the house, some reflection off trees on the left, and an optical allusion caught by the camera slower shutter.

The closer the rain is to the ground, the more it is in the wind shadow of the house, thus the vector of the rain changes. The rain was belting down, so it was reasonable to assume that it was constantly falling at its terminal velocity (according to three sites I asked) of roughly 10m/sec, With a slowing horizontal movement the more vertically it falls - the slower shutter speed makes it appear the rain was being blown in the opposite direction. At 10m/sec captured in 1/60sec, the rain will have fallen about 150mm while the shutter was open, which is quite a lot.

Ain't life interesting!

[Wavelength]

So you had a great time of enjoying a long awaited rain.....

[Tronhard]

So you had a great time of enjoying a long awaited rain.....

Actually, it was OK. I may have been pissed on, but not pissed off, to speak in the vernacular...
We really need the rain!