Craig Ulmer

Webcam Picks

2016-01-30 webcam

I had a chance to looked through my webcam dataset a little more and pick out a few interesting moments. First, my favorite site was a long-running webcam in Vancouver called KatKam, which shows the Burrard Bridge and the English Bay. I've never been there before, but the colors of the water, sky, and bridge often looked pleasant. While flipping through its pictures, I noticed that one night the webcam caught a lightning strike in the distance:


Another favorite webcam for me is at the Mount Wilson Observatory, near LA. I visited the observatory one time when I lived in Pasadena and thought the massive 100-inch Hooker Telescope was really amazing. Their webcam captures a few different views of the surrounding area, including the mountains, the observatories, and LA. However, back in September of 2009 it monitored a major forest fire as it marched over the hills. It must have been terrifying to watch it move from crest to crest, getting closer every day:


The Eiffel Tower was also another good one. There were at least three different cameras pointed at it, so if a supervillain ever did make a ray gun to steal it, it would be well documented. The Eiffel Tower was also one of the few places in Europe that I continued grabbing after dark, as they often had interesting light displays on it and around it during the holidays. Bastille day was a good day to check it out- I even caught some fireworks around it in 2009: