May 31 2009
Thunderstorm View from Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster: Link
I am not a great photographer, but I know that half the battle in taking a good picture is being there. So, internet web cams intrigue me. They offer the chance for internet users to be in a thousand places at one time. And screen capture technology allows web surfers to essentially use web cams almost like their own home cameras.
And I am not the only one with this fascination. Ship watchers at boatnerd.com monitor web cams to determine locations of interesting ships along the Detroit River and elsewhere. Outdoorsmen at the Michigan Sportsman forums often use web cams to determine the types and locations of game species on various pieces of land. Birders use in-nest webcams to see if local falcons and eagles have hatched an egg. Tom Skilling, the weather forecaster at WGN, uses web cams to show viewers the approach of storms.
A good example of this web cam use can be found on a blog maintained by Jeff Chandler. He was monitoring the approach of thunderstorms over Lake Erie on Friday night and decided to use the camera at the top of Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster to take a picture of the storm. You can see his result at the following link:
Thanks for the link. I’m often on the hunt for webcams or streaming video sites in areas which are about to be hit by severe weather just on the off chance I’ll see a twister or something. You should have seen the webcam later on after the storm passed as you could see a rainbow shining into the park. It was awesome.
Hey, nice work on this. This kind of thing gets the wheels turning in my brain. I wonder who owns the copyright of a picture taken in this way. Is it the person who owns the camera? Or is it the person who did all the work to determine a good time to take a screen capture and actually hit save? I could totally see a creative artist with a show completely composed of web cam shots.