A Winter's Cloudscape

There have been some dramatic developments in the sky over Luxor this afternoon. The winds have blown in many clouds and the interaction of those and the sun and bits of blue sky have yielded interesting patterns.

Golden Sunset

The dust/sand in the air yesterday made this golden sunset possible.

There were some nice clouds too!

Luxor Cloud Atlas

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Not Another Sunset!!!

Sorry, just can't help myself. The sunsets here can be so glorious. Here is a sequence from Wednesday:

And just one from last night:

Testing...Testing...

I am the proud owner of a new Canon PowerShot S100 (Thanks to KV and CG for their help in making the decision to purchase this particular camera and thanks to ES for transporting the camera and SL for bringing the great retro camera case to Luxor!). What follows are some of the first shots I have taken with this lovely camera. These are all "Automatic" or "Scene Selection". I haven't had a chance yet to explore the semi- and fully manual options available to me. I'm going to have to "re-learn" manual photography as I haven't had to use those skills in years!

Flora:

Poinsettia

Red Flame (Clerodendron splendens)

Persian Acacia (Albizia julibrissin)

Fauna:

Look closely for the kite in the palm tree!

Kite near their nest

Kite again

Bee-eater just before take-off!

Buttons blending in

Beau doing his third favorite thing (after eating and playing)

Landscape, Waterscape, Moon:

Gurn with clouds

Felucca at sunset

Handheld moon

 Sunsets:

Sunset and felucca from the roof

Sunset and felucca from the Winter Palace

Sunset from MY roof 

End of that same sunset

Architecture--"Old":

Luxor Temple - Colonnade Hall

Luxor Temple - Layers of history

Architecture--"New":

Winter Palace with a golden glow at sunset

Luxor door

Another Great Sunset...

What can I say?

Except...how 'bout those clouds?

And what about these from Sunday while we were on the roof for our first shisha of the season:

It's a hard life!

Red Sky at Night...

A glorious sunset yesterday after lots of rain!

Stormy Weather

For the past couple of days we have been having very un-Luxorlike weather. All last night and into today there has been cloud cover, thunder, lightning and rain (real rain, not a few drops!). This photo was taken on Saturday, but it does show some of the dramatic clouds that have been streaming over our fair city:

Check out this video of some of the astonishing lightning (courtesy of Jane Akshar):

Even long-timers are saying that they don't remember such a storm in the recent past. In eight-plus seasons, I certainly haven't experienced anything like this in intensity and duration. Here are some images conditions this morning and during the lunch hour:

Of course, even though the cool air is welcome to humans, this weather plays havoc with the monuments--mud bricks just "melt". So please, rain "go away"!