Deer chase!

Deer chase!
Originally uploaded by Srichand Pendyala

I was driving up to Copper Harbor on a bright beautiful Saturday, when this Whitetailed deer running alongside the road, passed me from the left, crossed over onto the right lane and then sprinted along the road for a good half a minute.

Not wanting to confuse the Deer any further, I kept a good distance away from it, but stayed right behind it, while a friend dug my camera out of the bag. During those few seconds, my speedometer read approx 35 miles an hour and the Deer was almost always a constant distance from me.

Finally when I got my camera, I flipped the wheel to "P" mode, let the camera choose everything, zoomed to 55mm and fired off a burst of shots, trying to capture the chappy, while the sunlight was still on him.

Having had enough excitement and thrill for the day (its white tail up, indicating fear and alarm), the Deer decided that discretion was the better part of valor and vanished into the woods in a blitz.

Incoming Ice Age?

Lake Superior, almost froze over 100% [1] again this season. The accepted theory, is that the Lake has a massive ice cover once every 20 years. The lake was last frozen over in 2003, nearly 100% in 1996, 96% in 1994, 100% in 1979, 95% in 1972, 100% 1962[2].

The Lake seems to have frozen over again, over the 2008-2009 winter. Between 1962 and 1979, 17 years elapsed before the lake completely froze. It took another 17 years before it froze in 1996 and another 7 years before it froze in 2003. Its only taken another 6, before the lake frozen over again in 2009.

If this statistical correlation is to be trusted and extrapolated, then we are looking at a scenario where the lake will begin to freeze over with much shorter cycles, possibly resulting in the lake freezing completely each year.

Is this a sign of the onset of an Ice Age? Most scientific bodies tend to think that this is just an anomaly and that we are in a global-warming phase. Technically, we are still in an Ice age, as Ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica exist.

[1] Its difficult to define "completely freeze over". Its accepted that "very little open water areas" is what is "completely frozen" could mean.

[2] Data from http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/superior030603.htm