Worth a Second Look - 4

I've taken many photos of these huge floating hotels while they are moored at Ogden Point or entering or leaving the harbor but I think this is my favorite. I took it in May 2011. There was lots of snow on the Olympic Peninsula mountains that year. I like the contrast between the bright mountains in the background and the dark rocks of Work Point in the foreground and the way these two features frame the huge ship.

Stormy Weather

Victoria is usually a sunny place but lately the weather has been pretty much as pictured above. This is the entrance to the Inner Harbour, Work Point on the right and the Ogden Point Breakwater beyond the rocks.You can see the people out for a Sunday stroll on the breakwater when the rain let up for awhile.

Olympic Mountains

Today was one of those days when various photo ideas came to nothing so here's a photo from the archives, almost exactly five years ago to this day. Taken with a 300mm telephoto lens it shows the Olympic Mountains across the strait in their winter splendor.

Cloudy Weather

I'm posting this photo today mostly because it shows clearly the kind of weather we've been having for the last week or so. A second reason is that it nicely shows the mountains on the Olympic Peninsula across the water. Usually lately they have been invisible behind banks of low cloud. Lots of snow up there. The seaplane coming in for a landing is West Coast Air, one of several airlines offering flights from Vancouver to Victoria Harbour.

Inversion

This is a kind of weather we see often. Here we are looking at the Coho, a car ferry, as it exits the Inner Harbour on one of its trips to Port Angeles, hidden beneath that cloud bank on the horizon. Poking up above the clouds are the peaks of the Olympic Peninsula. I'm happy to say that this kind of weather usually stays over there on the other side of the strait. Victoria is relatively flat and it seems these low level clouds either stay on the US side or blow over us to Vancouver where the mountains bring them up short again. That's my personal theory for why Victoria gets so many more hours of sunshine every year than its neighbours. Anyway, this kind of low cloud is called an inversion because it is the opposite (the inverse) of what we normally see - clouds up in the sky and clear air near the ground. On the left of this photo you can see the Ogden Point Breakwater.

Olympic Mountains

Often visible across the strait from Victoria are these magnificent mountains of the Olympic Range, here seen just after sunrise last week.

Gray Day

I went out to Macaulay Point today to see if I could spy some different kinds of birds. Tomorrow I'll post a few photos of what I saw but to set the scene here's what it was like today looking from Macaulay Point in Esquimalt across the Strait of Juan de Fuca towards the Olympic Peninsula. (For those not from this part of the world: those mountains are in the USA. The rocks in the foreground are in Canada.)

Squalls Over the Strait

Looking down on Victoria from Mt. Douglas today one can see the rain on the Olympic Peninsula across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

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I've been a bit busy lately so, to all the kind people who have been giving me awards, thank you again for the honor. Tomorrow I will respond appropriately.

Royal Roads

Within the Greater Victoria area, travelling along the coast south and west, one passes Esquimalt Harbour and then Esquimalt Lagoon. This photograph is taken from the spit that marks the outer edge of the lagoon looking towards Metchosin. Royal Roads was the name given to the anchorage to the left. The snowy mountains in the background are across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Olympic Peninsula, in neighbouring Washington State, USA.