Howzabout a thread for overseas Singaporeans to share images of
their summer experiences and activities, eh? I'll start the ball
rolling.
The following pictures were taken at Lock & Dam No. 2 on the
Mississippi River just outside the town of Hastings, south of St.
Paul. This area, being part of a wildlife preserve, sees its share
of migratory birds, and I managed to snap a few pictures of some
egrets (I think that's what they are, but feel free to correct me
if I'm wrong!) that happened to be passing by. Some of these
pictures were taken at extreme zoom, so please pardon the grainy
quality.
This how the day started when we headed out to Hastings:
Then, returning from the dam, the weather turned nasty. Very
nasty:
Bear in mind the previous image was taken around noon. We had
multiple lines of severe thunderstorms move through the cities,
dumping lots of rain and golfball sized hail. A good friend who
lives in a 'burb slightly north of me reported that they were hit
by hail that accumulated to a depth of 4 inches on the ground.
Fortunately, my neighbourhood "only" got hit with torrential
amounts of rain, and there were no reports of tornadoes even though
the sirens were wailing.
Another view of the storm to the north:
Here's a weird-looking but ominous cloud formation that was seen
during the storm:
By early evening, most of the storms had passed, and this was
seen as we were heading out for dinner:
Edited to add:
Here's a picture of the hail accumulating on the deck of my good
friend Dave's house during the hailstorm mentioned above:
The depth of the hailstones covering the deck attests to the
intensity of the storm (and it wasn't over yet when that picture
was snapped!). I live about two miles south of Dave, but
fortunately it didn't hail in my area.
