A snow day

It was snowing when we went to bed last night, we woke up to snow still falling and it has not stopped all day. When I woke up I heard noises like thunder and was wondering how you could have thunder when it was snowing, and then I realised it was controlled explosions to avoid avalanches. After not much snow on the ground the sudden heavy snowfall causes very unstable conditions and it’s a high risk for avalanches, so they let off controlled explosions to shift the snow. They were doing this throughout the morning, and some of the mountain ski areas were not open today due to the avalanche risk. 

This image shows how much snow has fallen since yesterday. I photographed this scene when we arrived and there was no snow in sight, it was all brown grass and looking very dry - incredible how it changes in a day.

We had to walk Xena in a heavy snowfall, but she loved it. The snow was quite deep so her legs sank into it and she had fun running through the fresh powder snow. After the walk we went back to the supermarket as I decided to make tomato soup for lunch so needed more tomatoes. The soup was delicious, it’s a Marcus Wareing recipe that I have made often and it is very tasty. Gavin worked for the rest of the day (so much for taking the week off....)

Tonight is my camera club annual nature competition, thankfully it is with PDI images on zoom so I can attend. However the 1 hour time difference means it will be a late night for me as it only finishes at 11pm. We have some excellent nature photographers in our club, so I am looking forward to seeing their professional images. I almost did not submit any images as the standard is so high but then thought I might as well. Last year I actually won it for my class which was a bit of a joke when we have such specialist nature photographers amongst us. What is important these days in nature photography is that the image should be telling you something about the creature, so it should tell a story about habitat or behaviour. An excellent image of an unusual bird sitting on a stick just doesn’t cut it anymore. 

Tomorrow is forecast to be sunshine all day - the weather changes very quickly here in the mountains. It will be the perfect day for skiing so I imagine it will be busier than usual. We did not plan to ski this week, in fact I thought we would be doing spring cycle rides and walking, so I am not sure if we will ski tomorrow. With the avalanche risk being high and the lift not working from our village it is not that appealing. We have friends joining us on Thursday for a couple of days and as they are not skiers it was never our intention to ski this week.