Water, water everywhere

Spring has sprung here in Minnesota. That means the weather warms and the snow melts and all that water has to go everywhere. So this weekend the wife and I headed out to see what there was to see in the way of floods and waterfalls.

First stop was Minehaha Falls in Minneapolis. There was a goodly amount of water going over there but not as much as I had envisioned. But I did get to try the camera on manual to try to get the old ghostly water streaks coming of the waterfall with a long exposure. It was a really bright sunshiney day so even at 100 ASA film speed and an aperture F22 the slowest I could do for a shutter speed was about 1/20 second. So I was glad of the image stabilisation. Not much of a streaky water effect but something.

Next it was on to Stillwater on the St Croix river where we knew the water to have broke its banks. Sounds far worse that it was. This is an annual occurence that the city is well prepared for and the sandbags were out in force protecting the downtown area.
Above: Seeing the water where you can usually walk is an unusual sight.
Above: Stillwater is famed for its liftbridge and in previous days it had been closed because the water was over the top of it. When we were there, the water level had dropped a few feet but the water level is still a god 15' higher than it should be. A line of protective sandbads can be seen in the foreground.

A good day out that produced some interesting pictures.