Hey everyone. The snow and ice of last winter has finally faded into a distant memory, and I am back to fill you in with some exciting upgrades to this website and an update on some new adventures.
As you can probably see, I have relocated to sunny Scottsdale, Arizona to get a fresh start at everything. Sure, part of it was a rebellious reaction to the 842 gigatons of snow we got last winter in New England, but after things had spiraled out of my control pretty badly the past couple of years, being able to push the reset button is like having been reborn. And hey, you can’t complain at all when the calendar says December and the temperature outside is pushing 80 degrees.
Not surprisingly, the website has been undergoing a bit of a transition, and will continue to over the next several months. The big change is that the website will be much more evenly split between weather and landscape photography here in Arizona, as opposed to focusing primarily on weather when I was in Oklahoma. The dirt road “off the beaten path” adventures will continue just as they did in Oklahoma, as will the “Explore Oklahoma” series, which I guess will now have to become “Explore Arizonaâ€. I will also be bringing back the Historic Bridges series, which was undercut by winter storms the last year I was in Oklahoma. This blog will be making a return as well, covering a much broader range of topics than just weather.
The photo databases have also received a significant facelift. In addition to being able to browse photos by year, you are now able to browse photos by location (state) as well. As more photos are added, these features should make it much easier to find photos on the website. Additional “Under the Hood” upgrades should make the site run faster and more efficiently, saving time for you, and making things much easier to manage for me.
While the Valley of the Sun and its 330 sunny days per year are a far cry from the craziness that is unleashed on Tornado Alley every spring, the desert is equally beautiful, but in a much different way. Instead of supercells, you get the summer monsoon storms, spectacular sunsets year-round, and who doesn’t love a good haboob – one of my all time favorite meteorological terms.
In closing, I want to say a big thank you for all of your patience and support the past few years. It is great to be back and re-energized, and I can’t wait to share the next chapter of my photography adventures with all of you. To fresh starts and new experiences.
Matt