Grand Canyon, Arizona Webcam
January 28, 2009
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided gorge carved by the Colorado River in the United States state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park — one of the first national parks in the United States.
The Grand Canyon is a massive rift in the Colorado Plateau that exposes uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata, and nearly two billion years of the Earth’s history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock, for six million years, while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted.
In September 1540, under orders from the conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, along with Hopi guides and a small group of Spanish soldiers, traveled to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Afterwards, no Europeans visited the Canyon for over two hundred years.
Brooklyn Bridge, NY Webcam
December 25, 2008
The Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretches 5,989 feet over the East River, connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn (on Long Island).
Upon completion, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire suspension bridge, and the first bridge to connect to Long Island. Construction began on January 3, 1870. The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on May 24, 1883.
The bridge was designed by German-born John Augustus Roebling in Trenton, New Jersey. During surveying for the East River Bridge project, Roebling’s foot was badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus.
His son, Washington, succeeded him, but in 1872 was stricken with caisson disease (decompression sickness, commonly known as “the bends”), due to working in compressed air in caissons.
Sausalito, California Webcam
December 20, 2008
Sausalito (from Spanish: sauzalito “small willow grove”) is a San Francisco Bay Area city and is next to, and largely bounded by, the protected spaces of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Developed rapidly as a shipbuilding center in World War II, the city’s industrial character gave way in postwar years to a reputation as an artistic enclave and as a picturesque residential community incorporating large numbers of houseboats. Today two house boat communities still exist: Gallilee Harbor in Sausalito, Waldo Point and the Gates Cooperative just outside the city limit.
Sausalito was a center for bootlegging during the era of Prohibition in the United States. Because of its location facing the Golden Gate and isolated from San Francisco by the same waterway, it was also a favorite landing spot for adventurous rum runners.
Edmonton, Canada Airport Cams
November 11, 2008
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta. The city is located on the North Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province, an area with some of the most fertile farmland on the prairies.
Edmonton serves as the northern anchor of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and is a staging point for large-scale oil sands projects occurring in northern Alberta and large-scale diamond mining operations in the Northwest Territories.
The first inhabitants settled in the area that is now Edmonton around 3,000 BC and perhaps as early as 10,000 BC, when an ice-free corridor opened up as the last ice age ended. In 1754, Anthony Henday, an explorer working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, may have been the first European to enter the Edmonton area.
The first mosque established in North America—the Al-Rashid Mosque, founded by Abdullah Yusuf Ali—is situated in Edmonton.
Alaska Aviation Weathercams
October 29, 2008
Alaska is a US state whose territory was purchased in 1867 from the Russian Empire after Western Union stopped construction of its first electric telegraph line which ran from California, up the coast and across the Bering Strait, then to Moscow and into the European Telegraph network.
With its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly 34,000 miles of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet above the North Pacific. It is the most perfect volcanic cone on Earth, even more symmetrical than Japan’s Mount Fuji.
In 1964, the massive “Good Friday Earthquake” killed 131 people and destroyed several villages, many by the resultant tsunamis. The quake was the second most powerful one on Earth in the past fifty years, measured at 9.2 on the Richter scale.
Daytona, Florida Cameras
October 12, 2008
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) is a private university with a history dating from the early days of aviation. Students are enrolled in one of two residential campuses located in Daytona Beach, Florida and Prescott, Arizona or in ERAU Worldwide, composed of over 130 non-residential campuses and online programs.
The University began on December 17, 1925, exactly 22 years after the Wright Brothers‘ first flight, when Talton Higbee Embry and John Paul Riddle formed the Embry-Riddle Company at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, Ohio.
On December 25, 2006 at 1:45 p.m. an F2 tornado touched down in Daytona Beach, causing major damage to the campus. Several university buildings were damaged, and both the main administration building and the aircraft fleet maintenance hangar were destroyed. Fifty aircraft were damaged or destroyed totaling an estimated $50 million. Camera two at the North Ramp.
Popocatépetl Volcano Cam
March 22, 2008
This is one of the big volcanoes worth monitoring. Commonly referred to as ‘El Popo’, this is the second highest mountain in Mexico and one of the most active volcanoes in the country. There have been 20 major eruptions since 1519, the last major eruption occurred in 1947. The name of the volcano translates as ‘mountain that smokes’.
Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia
February 17, 2008
It would be hard to find a better spot from which to watch North-Atlantic storms pound the coast with waves. Recently I watched such a storm for a couple of hours and viewed some awesome waves explode over the rocks.
Camera is nicely placed to watch cloud formations and of course the sunrise. The cove was named after the sole survivor of a shipwreck in 1800.
