I Love Weather

      I promise I do leave my room, but the skies and cityscape outside my window are a constant source of wonder and ever changing scenes, and I must take pictures of them.  The other day we had a killer thunderstorm that, in typical thunderstorm fashion, was here and gone almost before I could get pictures of it.  The five o’clock sun lit every raindrop and turned the usually gray city into a glowing haze of gold and sepia. No filter or photoshop necessary.

looking west over the banlieu

      I took a ton of photos but half of them where without a memory card in the camera, so those where pretty useless.  The wind was blowing the rain in such a way that it wasn't coming in my window, which made it the perfect spot to watch the weather.  With windows closed, I couldn't hear the rain or the thunder, but standing there with both windows open, feeling the cold wind, and hearing all of those lovely storm sounds was pretty darn perfect.

      I have yet to figure out what church that is, but I've always liked its shape as it doesn't seem to fit in with the traditional French church models that I'm used to and it is such a contrast to the 60's era apartment buildings around it.  

My intersection looking all shiny and antique 

     
      These two pictures where taken 2:03 minutes apart and are a testament to the speed at which the storm passed over.  I looked down to change a setting on my camera and then looked back up again to see blue skies and a return normal Paris colors.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Tour Montparnasse (tall rectangular thing) which just seems so out of place in a city like this; however, it does help give a sense of distance and scale.  I just know that the property value of someone somewhere went down drastically because they built a high-rise directly in front of their view of the Eiffel Tower.  I guess I got pretty lucky.

      The rain soon dissipated as the wind blew the clouds away but there was a bit of time where it was raining where I was but sunny and clear all to the west.  Then all the rain stopped, the wind slowed, and the lowering light formed yet another neon hued sunset that I purposefully didn't take pictures of.  So, here is an entire post dedicated to a ten minute storm which only goes to prove that I am more weather nerdy than thought before.  What can I say, I love weather.

-Kate Alice