Working in Knoxville tomorrow morning before heading back to Oklahoma tomorrow night. Made the trip up to Cade’s Cove in the hopes of catching the storm and the “smokey” clouds.
Here’s a couple of cell captures. I shot several with all 3 of my regular cameras, but wont download them until the weekend.
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See any bears? Cades Cove is supposed to have a ton of them. And is access to the park open with the government shutdown?
IIRC, there’s a bit of privately-held property in there still, so maybe that’s kept it open?
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Holy Smoke it took Days to read this Thread!! 
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They’ll be a test. Early 2016 always trips people up. 
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Found the furloughed gov’t worker… 
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LOL Actually a neighbour to the east of fearless frog near YXC.
Full time CCP, OAS burden on society.
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Ah what a day…
Weather gave us a bit of a lemon but we turned it into lemonade.
We had to turn around 200 meters below our planned target due to bad visibility and potentially hazardous conditions (lots of snow drift on the final slope), so we went about halfway down where we noticed the conditions were much better. Picked a different peak where the slope had a more southern orientation where the snow had set and lo and behold, this happened:
Few more from the ascent:
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That reminds me…you know how the moon looks bigger when it has just risen above the horizon? And you probably know that it is an optical illusion.
To get rid of the illusion, all you have to do is stand with your back to the moon, then bend way over and look at the moon though your legs. Optical illusion gone!
If you try this, make sure you have a friend take a photo of you doing it and post it on Mudspike. 
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Fantastic. How is the avalanche risk now? Has the snow packed down a bit?
It’s 3 above the treeline and 2 below. Went down pretty quickly around thirsday as there was a short warm weather window. Now it’s cold again and there’s a pretty sizeable snowdrift problem, that means you can not be sure what is safe unless you have a look at the slope itself. That’s why i called it quits today, no visibility+a lot of drifted snow where, going for the summit would have pushed the margin pretty thin.
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We could certainly spare you some, parts of the alps got so much that the official weather departments snow sensors stopped picking it up (at 5 metres). And most of that fell in 2 weeks. It’s only January an the northern alps have historic high marks across the board. Crazy.
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Lunar Eclipse this morning:
Totally worth it despite of the freezing temperatures (-8°C).
Powerplant on the riverbank of the Rhine in Duisburg, Germany this evening:
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Nice to see the resistance to using the soft rock classic ‘Blood Red Wolf Moon’ term. 
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I almost feel guilty posting this due to my fellow Canadian’s getting the real cold. It feels a lot like Autumn still here. I’m actually considering driving 5 hours this weekend to go get properly cold.
Note: The school bus in the field isn’t some nefarious elementary teacher using underaged workers, it’s just the cheap old vehicles they wheel the berry pickers around in.
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No bears or elk this time. But a crap-ton of deer. Some beautiful racks.
No issues with entry. Park was really clean and bathrooms open.