Weather Archives - Heartland Safari

Two brilliant stars rise next to the barn on a frigid Iowa morning. Only one, of course; the one on the left is a sun dog.

Sun Dogs, Sun Pillars and Diamond Dust

Updated February 6, 2026

It’s a cold and frosty morning in late January. Wispy white clouds decorate the sky. The sun is just rising above the horizon at the optical latitude of the barn. As it rises, Bryan reports that it is accompanied by a pair of sun dogs. Sun dogs are one of several optical phenomena known as […]

Weather

The morning after an ice storm on Owl Acres. The trees are coated in glass, turned crystal by the rising sun. A ghost image of the barn is visible through the tangle of defoliated trees in the foreground.

It’s About Layers: Ice Storm

Updated December 23, 2024

The world is covered in ice. Ice on the porch; ice on the railing; ice on the sidewalk; ice on the power lines. Ice-covered branches tick against each other, filling the soundscape with confetti. The wind chimes, usually authoritative in their announcement of wind from the southeast, are coated with ice. Instead of their bright, […]

Weather

The Aurora Borealis over Iowa in May. The sky is all green and purple light, shot through with vertical shafts, the whole hanging over black silhouettes of trees, yard lights and the horizon of Owl Acres at night.

Merry Dancers: Aurora Borealis

Updated October 21, 2024

Owl Acres occupies about eight acres of Iowa land, and most of our exploration has been on that land, that dirt that we walk on. We’ve taken a few excursions into the vertical, wondering what’s going on beneath our feet, hidden in the vertical depths of the place. And now, let’s look up. The universe […]

Weather

A Matter of Chance: Tornadoes

Updated June 3, 2024

There’s a large branch from a walnut tree hanging down from thirty feet high in the tree on Owl Acres. The other end is resting on the ground, bracing it from falling completely. It will take a professional tree service to finish disconnecting it from the tree and drop it to the ground. It is […]

Weather

First Snow

Updated January 12, 2024

The wind is blowing at 30 miles an hour, and snow is flying sideways past my study window. The birds on the bird feeder are facing into the wind, and the dogs are joyously cavorting in the snow. The temperature is around 32 degrees. The snow is wet and sticky, plastered to the vertical surfaces […]

Weather

A narrow Figure 8 in the sky. Think of a gently twisted loop, like a rubber band, viewed edge-on. This is an analemma of the sun, a composited photo of about 85 separate images, taken at the same time of day and at the same place for a year. The composite photo was then placed on a single, daylight image of the location to complete the work. It records the position changes of the sun in the sky due to Earth’s movement on its orbit. The high and low ends of the figure mark the solstices, and where the lines cross, the equinoxes.

New Beginnings: Winter Solstice

Updated December 21, 2023

Today is the Winter Solstice. Technically the solstice is a point in time when the north pole is tilted the farthest away from the sun that it will get in its yearly orbit. It occurs because the earth is tilted on its axis relative to its orbital plane. At this point in the earth’s orbit […]

Weather

Snowflake with six strong, hexagon-based arms. It’s suspended in mid-air, caught on the gossamer strand of a barely visible spider web.

Art in Motion: Snowflakes

Updated December 11, 2023

Snowflakes arrived on Owl Acres to welcome winter on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They piled up to about three inches of fluffy white snow. Each one of those trillions of snowflakes was a unique work of art. In spite of the fact that they all formed in the same cloud, at the same time and […]

Weather

Hard to take a picture of something made out of air (like a heat dome), so here’s one of an airborne activity happening at Owl Acres on a hot summer morning. A large quad drone is being used for aerial chemical application to the adjacent cornfield. The aircraft flies a pattern over the field, controlled by a computer and guided by GPS. It’s applying a broadleaf herbicide that kills every plant in the field that’s not corn, and a broad-spectrum (pyrethrin) insecticide that kills every insect it touches.

Too Darn Hot: Heat Dome

Updated September 11, 2023

For several days this summer, the temperatures climbed into the high nineties during the day and stayed in the high seventies at night. Days like that are the worst of the summer days. The humidity is so high that when I walk out of my air conditioning into the heat, the air feels alive as […]

Weather

Grey branches of a Siberian Elm, covered with brilliant white hoarfrost, against a pure blue winter sky

Winter Words

Updated January 19, 2023

On a January night, the air is still. The overnight temps hold in the teens and twenties, and the humidity is close to 100%. The conditions are perfect for one of Owl Acres’ beautiful winter creations–hoar frost. The word “hoar” is archaic but means “grayish white; gray or gray-haired.” It’s like wisps of fog frozen […]

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