……..and then the sea turned pink

Better viewed large. 

It’s been another day of winter sunshine, albeit icy cold. We’ve been visiting a friend and by the time we leave the sky has darkened ominously to the west. 

We travel towards home, watching the skies grow darker, clouds towering over the sea, seeming to reach down to touch the horizon. We stop off at Llanddulas beach where I photograph these giants, great swirling mounds of cumulonimbus clouds. Zooming in on their base reveals a roiling, seething mass of energy, throwing sheets of precipitation down onto the sea. 

We move on homewards, driving first along the prom. By now the clouds have taken on an altogether different form.  It’s as if we’re almost in the middle of that blue-black base of energy, the sky so dark - almost apocalyptic. And yet, from somewhere, sun rays manage to illuminate the buildings of Rhos on sea, strangely bright against the towering blackness. The little breakwater and the harbour vessels glow eerily for a moment, before those threatening clouds let loose their load and Colwyn Bay disappears into a white out. 

We just about make it up our now snowy hill, G inching forward, hoping he does not have to stop, and carefully turn into our driveway, glad to be home.  It wouldn’t be the first time if we’d have to abandon the car in town and walk. 

And then it stops: everywhere is white and freezing temperatures mean the snow will be here overnight. 

Upstairs, I look out through the bedroom window to see the sea has now turned pink reflecting the angry reds now high in what remains of those monster clouds. 

It would be impossible to only choose one shot in today’s storm chasing narrative. So for my main, there’s Rhos on Sea dwarfed by the approaching storm, with extras of the surreal lighting in the harbour, storm cloud at Llanddulas, an ‘inside the storm cloud’ collage, and the final stage where the sea turned pink - the latter a rather poor shot taken in haste through the bedroom window.