Full Moon Risin'

Our roof deck affords us some excellent views in an almost 360-degree panorama. It's not that it's a skyscraper, or rotating restaurant kind of place -- far from it.  It just is in a good location a bit higher than the palm trees on one side, and there are no other roof desks blocking the views.

We've gotten some great storm clouds, a fine sunrise, and now a full moon appearing to rise out of the "airport control tower building" as we refer to it.  Irene said, "quick, come quick, aliens have landed!!!"

Could have been!

More cool skies

We've been getting threatening skies recently. Our downstairs neighbor came up to the roof to clean his mountain bikes, and we asked about the storms. He said they were typical for August and September.  The shots below took place within about 10 minutes of each other.

This was the actual, unretouched color -- crazy, like a Martian sunset.

 Looking out the back, a storm brewing over Tibidabo:

Towards the sea, an intense contrast as storm clouds occlude the back-lit clouds by the building that looks like an airport control tower.

Cool storm clouds over the city

I was sitting inside hacking code and noticed it was fiercely dark outside, at 6pm when it's usually blinding.  I could hear the wind picking up and thought I'd heard distant thunder, but you don't get thunderstorms here -- not in Europe (or so I thought).

Out on the roof deck, the wind was really threatening to blow things over the railing: "Auntie Em, it's a twister!". The light was weird, I always think "irrlicht", the Germanic "crazy light".  This is like the kick-ass storms we enjoy in the DC area: sudden, ferocious, short-tempered and short-lived.  I saw a couple nearby bolts of lightening, the first I've seen in Europe.

The sky was wall-to-wall with heavy, seriously ominous clouds. I managed to snap a few pictures while on a conference call back to the US. (isn't wifi great?)

 After most of it had blown from the mountains to the sea, there was a faint rainbow.