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Spring 2015 Official Picture Thread


donsutherland1

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  • 2 weeks later...

A couple of pictures after today's deluge in Austin. One is a cool shot of the mammatus clouds we've had for a couple of hours now from my apartment. Another is a drainage basin that goes into Barton Creek which was a torrent just after the rain stopped. Usually it's completely dry. I tried to get closer to the creeks but the access points are mostly closed. It looks like there were a few tornadoes around as well, especially in the Hill Country. post-76-0-78013500-1432603629_thumb.jpgpost-76-0-90588800-1432603649_thumb.jpgpost-76-0-70282700-1432603684_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Landscape in Austin sure dries out fast.

Yeah-that path you see is a hiking trail that goes around for maybe a mile around Barton Creek, which goes through the middle of those woods roughly and hooks up with the Colorado River near downtown, by Zilker Park (This picture is from my office, which is about 2 miles from my apartment on the other side from downtown, my commute is WAY better than when I had to commute to Midtown every day on packed and delayed trains). Downtown is about 2 miles away from my office-you can pick out the Capitol dome on the left side of the taller downtown buildings, closer to where the shower was. The University of Texas campus is left past there and is mostly obscured in the photo.

 

Apparently the vegetation still suffers from the years of drought we had before the deluge this spring, and the heat/high sun has baked everything the last two weeks. The lawns and many other parts of town are actually very green, and grass/weeds are growing like crazy, which I've heard hasn't happened in a long time. We really have just about every type of tree/vegetation here, from Washingtonia palm trees common in the Southwest/Mexico, to mainly cedar and oak, and cacti. This area is a dividing line between the more humid Southeast climate, the more dry Southwest climate, and where cold outbreaks can reach that can drop us well below freezing in the winter. Also, Austin is the spot in Texas where terrain goes from being very flat on the Great Plains north of here, to rugged and mountainous west and south of here, in the Hill Country and beyond that the Rockies. If I turned my camera the other way, it's hilly like you would see in the Poconos or Catskills. 20 miles north of here, flat as a pancake. 

 

I've also seen especially in the last month more and different kinds of birds/lizards/"things"/bugs/critters, etc than I've ever seen in my life. Down here they call wild animals "critters", which are harmless, and "varmints", which are dangerous, like tarantulas, venomous snakes, and the like. I've definitely been racking up some nasty bug bites the last couple of weeks-the mosquitoes are everywhere because of all the rain. The mosquitoes are also bigger down here it seems. 

 

What's really cool to me is how in Austin "nature" and "city" coexist-how you can be in Downtown and a major bustling city (over 900K population) and then be able to hike, swim, and paddle down the river in the same place essentially (there are tons of paddling boats and swimmers right on the Colorado River by downtown), and drive a few miles and be in the country, more or less. Lake Travis, a huge camping and boating spot is a 30-40 minute drive from downtown. Certainly nothing like what you would see around NYC or a Northeastern city. 

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It's interesting how much drier the landscape is in this photo than the last. Major heat the past couple weeks after the deluge plus the former drought...

I disagree about the lack of nature in NYC. My dad and I hiked last weekend in Van Cortland Park, which is 1000 acres of mostly preserved forest in the Bronx...mostly maple, tulip tree, and oak. That was a nice hike. Harriman State Park is like 25 miles from the City, Sterling Forest is like 30 miles. Sterling Forest/Lake is over 20,000 acres of wilderness so not insignificant. And there's Prospect Park in Brooklyn where many cross country ski...

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Yeah, you're right about that Zucker-Central Park is certainly very nice and there's Prospect Park, Van Cortlandt Park, and so on. I guess what I was getting at is how Austin (and cities in the Midwest/Plains in general from what I've heard) go from urban to essentially country much quicker than Megalopolis cities. Long Island is very heavily populated out to the William Floyd Parkway just about. Austin is also expanding very quickly-where I live now was essentially farmland or scattered single family homes 25 years ago. 

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Yeah, you're right about that Zucker-Central Park is certainly very nice and there's Prospect Park, Van Cortlandt Park, and so on. I guess what I was getting at is how Austin (and cities in the Midwest/Plains in general from what I've heard) go from urban to essentially country much quicker than Megalopolis cities. Long Island is very heavily populated out to the William Floyd Parkway just about. Austin is also expanding very quickly-where I live now was essentially farmland or scattered single family homes 25 years ago. 

Yeah, maybe nature and city are a little bit more integrated in Austin whereas NYC is like separate parks. I can understand your point there.

 

Also, what happened to the NYC suburbs may happen in Austin...When my dad was growing up in the 1950s/60s in Queens Village, Long Island was all farmland just past the Queens/Nassau border. His area was the beginning of the highly settled NYC metro, whereas now dense population areas extend almost to the Nassau/Suffolk border. It's possible that this transition is beginning to occur in Austin as you note: your area was once farmland with scattered houses and is now part suburban/part forest. It will be interesting to compare the development of Austin in the next 20-30 years to what happened to NYC in the 50s and 60s with the Levittown phenomenon..

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Yeah, maybe nature and city are a little bit more integrated in Austin whereas NYC is like separate parks. I can understand your point there.

 

Also, what happened to the NYC suburbs may happen in Austin...When my dad was growing up in the 1950s/60s in Queens Village, Long Island was all farmland just past the Queens/Nassau border. His area was the beginning of the highly settled NYC metro, whereas now dense population areas extend almost to the Nassau/Suffolk border. It's possible that this transition is beginning to occur in Austin as you note: your area was once farmland with scattered houses and is now part suburban/part forest. It will be interesting to compare the development of Austin in the next 20-30 years to what happened to NYC in the 50s and 60s with the Levittown phenomenon..

There might be a limit to how much further Austin can expand due to how the roads are built here. Traffic is horrendous on many occasions here, because there hasn't been a major infrastructure expansion to keep up with the influx of people. There's one light rail line and buses, besides that, no mass transit. The cost of living is also increasing fast here. Downtown apartments are quite pricey, $1500-$2000/month and up, and prices are rising away from downtown as well. There's new building construction all over the place-my apartment complex just added a new stage and is thinking of building out even more. ~150 people move to Austin every day. 

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