Changing patterns of cloud over Scout Scar, 24 August 2019 Contrast the awesome beauty of cloudscapes over Scout Scar this morning with an August of unsettled weather, of sudden heavy downpours.
Consider the skies over the burning Amazonian forest. Over the burning boreal forests of Siberia, the taiga.
Remember Okjokull, an Icelandic glacier lost ten years ago to rising temperatures.
'This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.' So reads the commemorative plaque.
Consider the skies over the burning Amazonian forest. Over the burning boreal forests of Siberia, the taiga.
Remember Okjokull, an Icelandic glacier lost ten years ago to rising temperatures.
'This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.' So reads the commemorative plaque.
On Wednesday this week, Frances and I went to Abbot Hall, Kendal, to see an exhibition: Ruskin, Turner and the storm cloud. Clouds were the subject of their paintings and drawings and the exhibition was curated with a text about the industrial revolution and the way these artists depicted its effect in cloudscapes.
Last summer, the heat-wave summer of 2018, there were fires raging on Saddlleworth Moor releasing CO2 and minerals locked up in the peat since their deposition at the time of the industrial revolution. Neither Turner nor Ruskin could have been aware of this abiding legacy of the industrial revolution. Certainly not of the pace and global reach of Climate Change.
Last summer, the heat-wave summer of 2018, there were fires raging on Saddlleworth Moor releasing CO2 and minerals locked up in the peat since their deposition at the time of the industrial revolution. Neither Turner nor Ruskin could have been aware of this abiding legacy of the industrial revolution. Certainly not of the pace and global reach of Climate Change.
For today, the skies over Scout Scar were breathtakingly beautiful. A light wind vanished by mid-day as we prepared for the hottest August Bank Holiday on record. You could see wind-sheer at altitude in great sweeps of cloud, patterns constantly changing. Delicate, exquisite design - cloudscape not unlike seascape- foam riding on the waves. After the leaden grey skies and downpours of Thursday the morning was the more delightful.
A kestrel hung hovering against bright white cloud. A faded and torn painted lady fluttered along the escarpment edge. Blackberries ripening, sloes and juniper berries.
Down in Kendal, Victoria Bridge - known as batman bridge for a decorative motif- was reopened to traffic. It had been closed twice to repair flood damage. Next week, Gooseholme Bridge, a pedestrian bridge closed as unsafe since Storm Desmond in December 2015, is to be demolished. A smart information board has just been erected on the river bank telling the history of the bridge, the floods which have pounded it through time are shown in photograph and with accompanying plans of earlier bridges from the archives. A new bridge will be built and the information boards tells of the plans.
A kestrel hung hovering against bright white cloud. A faded and torn painted lady fluttered along the escarpment edge. Blackberries ripening, sloes and juniper berries.
Down in Kendal, Victoria Bridge - known as batman bridge for a decorative motif- was reopened to traffic. It had been closed twice to repair flood damage. Next week, Gooseholme Bridge, a pedestrian bridge closed as unsafe since Storm Desmond in December 2015, is to be demolished. A smart information board has just been erected on the river bank telling the history of the bridge, the floods which have pounded it through time are shown in photograph and with accompanying plans of earlier bridges from the archives. A new bridge will be built and the information boards tells of the plans.
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