Moody Mountains

Sometimes the mountains are not beautiful. This is how they looked at 10am today. Apart from cloning out the top of a telegraph pole and resizing the image for uploading I have done no post-processing on it. I used the wide view on my camera.

There was a gusty nor'wester blowing and it was bitterly cold. Usually the nor'wester is warm, even in winter when it crosses the snowy mountains. At the very top of the shot is the nor'west arch, the iconic Canterbury cloud-form, greyer than usual. We expect it to look more like this, taken a year ago. Things did improve a little during the day, but it was so cold that even popping outside for a couple of minutes chilled me to the bone.

The phenomenon of the nor'west arch is very interesting. There's a Wiki article about it for those who are interested in weather stuff.