Tuesday…

From my drive home yesterday.

The weather was threatening to follow me home…but it didn’t. The clouds were amazing. And a little post processing in Photomatix Pro never hurts to bring them out in HDR.

I drive by this location regularly since I first discovered it last fall. For a location that is mostly a man made ditch, it is sometimes quite photogenic. Sometimes though, it’s just a muddy scar when they aren’t pumping river water out to the farmers. This is Brazos River water and the river is running high right now which explains the muddy red-brown color of the water. I have heard it said that the early mapmakers of Texas mixed up the Brazos and the Colorado in the early days of exploration…

Handbook of Texas Online:
The name Colorado, Spanish for “red,” is evidently a misnomer, for the water of the stream is clear and always has been, according to the earliest records of historians. Most authorities agree, however, that the name Colorado was first applied by Alonso De Leónqv in 1690, not to the present stream but to the Brazos, and there is considerable evidence to support the theory that the names of the two streams were interchanged during the period of Spanish exploration. The present names, however, were well established before the end of Spanish Texas.qv

So much for the geography and history lesson…The weather was providing such an interesting sky I had to make the effort to get somewhere to make use of it. Therefore this shot.

It’s time now to go check my email and reader….

++++++++++

Storms sweep through South Texas | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

Showers and thunderstorms flooded roads, damaged buildings and knocked out power Monday as the strong weather system swept across northeastern Texas.Houston police are investigating a fatal auto accident at Texas 225 and Goodyear. The wreck occurred about 9:27 p.m. in the westbound lanes.

The rainy weather also was blamed for at least one death in the Dallas area and caused numerous accidents, snarled traffic and canceled more than 100 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Storms sweep through South Texas | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
Showers and thunderstorms flooded roads, damaged buildings and knocked out power Monday as the strong weather system swept across northeastern Texas.

The rainy weather also was blamed for at least one death in the Dallas area and caused numerous accidents, snarled traffic and canceled more than 100 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

So now we know why the sky’s were so troubled…and pretty. Texas in Autumn.

++++++++++

I see Fred First is on the bottled water rant wagon. This wagon is really pretty crowded. Too bad I can’t seem to drag the women in my family on board. I cringe every time my wife or my daughter tell me we need to pick up water. They know how I feel about water in little throw away bottles…They just tune me out.

Selling the Sizzle: Bottled Water | Fragments From Floyd
October 16th, 2007

I didn’t write this benignly-snarky bit on bottled water, but found it over at MacInstruct of all places (I’m still mac-cited!)

The whole marketing strategy of bottled water is to “sell the sizzle, not the steak.” So if you really have found a pure spring in Minnesota or a melting glacier in Alaska, you will romance the life out of it, transporting the customer to the deep and silent woods where, centuries ago, the Ojibwa first discovered this bubbling treasure, or to the glacier where Inuits once greeted the sunrise and celebrated the solstice.

It also seems the marketers of bottled water have taken a page out of the governments play book and are selling fear. They leave the impression that the water out of the tap isn’t clean. Well, anyway you look at it the run of the mill tap water in America is cleaner than 90% of the drinking water in the world. I am even beginning to suspect that our insistence on drinking purifier, filtered, sanitized water is part of whats making us dso prone to catching every “bug” that goes around…

++++++++++

Time to hit the road under overcast skies…You all have a great day.