Two Weeks in and No One is Watching

I did this as a bit of a short term hobby to fill in some time that I had. The blogger stats pretty much confirm that no one is reading the blog so I guess I will treat this as a more sporadic thing. If you drop in and are interested in more leave a comment.

Thanks for reading.

Shots of the Day: 28.02.08

Not much to say. Storm passed. Province covered in white and getting cold. We have run out of salt in the province so some of the secondary highways might be just getting grit without salt. It may also mean an uptick in accidents in the province as people here, who have marginal driving skills on a good day, adjust.

One of the Fredericton webcameras was facing the wind when the snow blew through and since then it has been obscured by the buildup of ice and snow. Today the crust warmed up enough to melt and give a textured image. I have to say that I like the Impressionistic effect. What was once a boring construction site becomes something more.

Shots of the Day: 27.02.08

The weather was bad overnight but for the most part the storm was less than predicted. It got warm and started to rain early in the day over most of the south of the province and you can see that in the clear wet highways. It continued to snow over much of the northern part of the province and it was a wet clinging snow that obscured some of the camera lenses.

26.02.08 The Weather is Closing In

The weather office is calling for winter weather tomorrow so we can expect the highway viewscapes to change in a pretty serious way. Two days of neutral / gray light has meant for set after set of very boring photos.

The following set of photos was taken just as the light failed this evening. The cameras are all working except Shediac Bridge and the Coytown - Sheffield camera is still a loser but at least there is an image from it now.

Shots of the Day: 25.02.08

Well OK, it was a grey day and not one that was the best for capturing great photos by highway cameras. I checked Google Earth to see if I could identify where the highway cameras were located and I found a few of them.

To my eye the Durham Bridge camera is on an intersection looking downhill and east.

And I think that this is the Google Earth view of the location. I have marked it with a red circle and indicated the sight line of the camera with a line.


The Dieppe camera also looks east towards Sackville and is located inside the loop of the highway intersection with the highway to Shediac.

The highway camera at the highway bridge over the Saint John River from Coytown to Sheffield is close to the highway on the north said of the highway.

The Aroostook River camera seems to be located looking north and uphill over the Aroostook River. There is a barn visible to the hard right that I think is identifiable in the Google Earth view.

The Copp Loop Road highway camera is not as easy to identify and I am not sure about the location for this one. The farm seems to consist of a long older barn parallel to the road as in the Google Earth view and there are few candidates for the camera location.

The problem of course with Google Earth is that there are very few areas of high resolution in New Brunswick. The locations above are the ones that I am most sure of in high resolution areas. The cameras at the intersection of highway 95 and 540 is in a high resolution area but I could not be sure of the location. The camera looks west and is in a wooded section of divided highway and the only section that fits that description is too close to Woodstock to fit the description of being near the intersection.

The Saint John, Pennfield Ridge and Cape Pele cameras are likely in high resolution areas but their camera fields of view are so non-descript that I cannot be sure of their location. The other cameras all appear to be in lower resolution areas and can only be vaguely located.

Shots of the Day: 24.02.08

On the run but noticed that the Moon and the Sun set in the exact same spot at the intersection of Highways 95 and 540. This camera is rapidly becoming my favorite for sky and night observations.

Shots of the Day: Twilight in NB 23.02.08

Shots of the Day: 22.02.08

I had the oppotunity on Wednesday to actually use the highways cameras to help me decide to drive to Fredericton. I checked in to see the condition of the highways using the highway cameras and based on the bright sunny weather and the clear pavement shown on the cameras I set out. What I discovered was that the night before there had been an unforecast 5 cm of snow that the Highway People decided to ignore. That meant that there was a slick and treacherous layer of packed snow on the highway in the Moncton area and though I never saw a salt truck or plow it only ended when I drove up onto the MRDC highway. After that is was clear wet pavement that you could drive on at regular highway speeds. I guess the disclaimer is necessary what the cameras show is not what you will experience.

The Moon was back in the frame over the highway at the Brun Way HWY95 X 540 camera.

And the planet was back over the Brun Way Quisbis Hill Camera.



In both cases the different times and locations for the appearance, location and setting of the object would make for an interesting exercise for a high school science class. The same would be true for sunrise and sunset since both are captured in some of the cameras.

The camera at Sheffield - Coytown needs to be visited by the MRDC people. It looks like the camera has tilted at a crazy angle and only captures a small fragment of the highway and the colour balance and focus have gone bad.


The camera has gone from a "must monitor" camera to a majour disappointment. On the other hand the province is bringing its cameras back on line and I see the St. Margarets camera is back.

Yesterday the cameras captured the first human image that I have seen so far in the person of a snowmobiler just running off the bottom of the frame at the HWY95 /540 Brunway location.


Just a word on the Brun Way cameras. The Meductic camera is just a bad camera setup while the Aroostook River is one of my top three views. They give a larger more detailed view but I think they all have a heavy light filter on them that makes everything dim unless it is direct sunlight.

This morning the highways are deserted. At 11:30 in the morning on Friday I think we have the most deserted set of highway photos taken so far. Go figure.

Fredericton Has Web Cameras Also

To give the New Brunswick cities their fair treatment Fredericton has four active web cameras. Three are from the Fred-eZone service and feature constantly updated images of:

the North Side riverfront.

Link to web camera

There is also a Fredericton web camera from Fred-eZone with a view of the street in front of City Hall.

Link to web camera

And finally Fred eZone has a web camera with a view of Officers Square where there are often concerts and public events but in the winter is flooded to make a skating rink.

Link to web camera

The final Fredericton web camera is hosted by the Atlantic Forestry Center and it has a view from the roof of their building.


Link to web camera

Found on the Web: Another NB Web Camera

Found this web camera on the CBC New Brunswick webpage. Nice shot of streets looking out Saint John Harbour. It is also updated on a one minute cycle. Fits into catagory # 4 and #6 I'd say.

Link to web camera

Not an Eclipse but Still Cool

Last night was the night for the most spectacular lunar eclipse. It may have been cold but it could not have given us a clearer view. On the other hand, the NB Highway cameras were capturing other heavenly bodies.

Like the Moon over Highway 95.

And this must be a planet over Quisbis Hill. Look closely in the upper right hand corner.

Highway Camera Field of View Issues

Most of the NB Highway cameras fall into one of six catagories:

(1) Highway sweeps from bottom left to vanishing point in upper right. This is a standard "industrial view" it allows a close-up view of the road surface and enough narrative to understand the local weather. I would guess this meets the ideal intent of the highway camera.

(2) Highway sweeps from bottom right to vanishing point in upper left. This is essentially the same as above but from the other side of the highway.


(3) Highway runs from center bottom to vanishing point center top. This works for divided highways and for the most part gives a good view of traffic flow in both directions. There seems to be a reduction in the quality of the view of the road surface.

(4) Highway runs horizontally across field of view. This seems to be a rare choice and seems to be of limited value. Especially in winter you have a limited view of the road surface hidden behind snow banks. I assume the traffic engineers prefer the three previous catagories.

(5) Intersection. I guess this needs its own catagory but has elements of some of the previous catgories.

(6) Panorama or Scenic. OK this is not an objective catagory but it just seems that some fields of view have a greater narrative sweep than others. Especially here in NB where the images of most cameras are of barren roads in desolate landscapes. You just have to like looking at Durham Bridge, Copp Loop, Aroostook River and Welsford for the potential human contact.

Shots of the Day: 20.02.08

On one hand we can celebrate the return of the Moosehorn Creek camera to active service. The camera seems to be a standard left to right sweep from camera to the highway vanishing point with about 1/3 sky and reasonable picture quality.

On the other hand the new MRDC Coytown -Sheffield camera came back on for a short period but the field of view and picture quality have gone to a very bad place. It stopped again at 2:47.


I just liked this photo alot. The camera has an excellent narrative field of view and when it turns to the nightime shutter speed it makes the light trails more exciting.


Summary page for 6 PM

Shots of the Day: 19.02.08

Well, it was good to have a clear sky again. As you can see in the summary page below pretty much everyone was enjoying blue sky all over the province. The parts you can see at least. It would appear that dramatic changes in humidity and temperature play havoc with the cameras with five of them down today.


Even more distressing however was that the much appreciated Coytown - Sheffield camera stopped working today after one day in service. After 1:54 PM it was the same image for the rest of the day.

It is amazing what a day of warm rain will do to a thick layer of snow. Almost any location would show the same thing but these two photos of the farm on Copp Loop pretty much sums up the difference.

I got a kick out of the live video feed from the Confederation Bridge today. In the morning the ice was moving very fast north to south (left to right in the photo below). You could see the ice moving in reael time and piling up on the bridge supports with large sheets lifting and fracturing.


Then in the afternoon the ice was flowing just as hard in the opposite direction. What is strange about this picture is that there is a small car behind the truck and I have no idea what they were thinking but they were very close to the back of the truck. People not like us.

Shots of the Day: 18.02.08

OK, so today was a bad day for highway camera photo quality. It snowed last night and then turned to warm rain. Cold ground and warm humid air means fog. Almost all the cameras had problems with water on the lens for most of the day and some just never got better. I did see a police car for the first time early this morning in Blackland.

And my first snowplow at Mont Farlagne.

But all in all it was pretty awful. The only time the grey lifted was for about 20 minutes when a patch of blue sky showed up over Bathurst and moved on to Stonehaven and then disappeared.

But any day that they fire up a new highway camera has got to be a good day so I will end with a slide show of images from today that had something other than empty road or cars. Mostly transports but there are some other vehicles too.

New Camera Day: 18.02.08

A new highway camera has been brought online. The new camera seems to be on the South side of the Saint John River where the highway crosses from Sheffield to Coytown. This is an issue that I intend to pick up in a later posting but the traffic engineer that set up this camera has a bit of a poets eye in terms of the field of view. Some of the cameras have a very bland or even bad framing but this camera will soon be one of my favorites. The frame has the river bank, bridge and river in it. You can see the head of one of the islands in the river and the frame is about 1/3 sky which will make the photos "pop" when we have clear weather. This is a good addition to the family.

The camera must have been up on the MRDC website for awhile but was only linked to the provincial page this morning. I see that there is a 8 minute difference between MRDC time and Provincial time. It also appears to be on a 30 minute not a 20 minute cycle. The MRDC page seems to indicate pending cameras at Salisbury and Longs Creek although the link for Longs Creek perversely shows an image from the Coytown-Sheffield camera.

Shots of the Day: 17.02.08

You know, when I started this exercise I figured that if I sat on the highway camera website especially in the early morning I would see some wildlife on the more deserted stretches. Nope. I thought I might see the odd speeder caught on the main highways. Nope. I thought there might be the odd snow plow or hitchhiker. Nope. Just a lot of photos of deserted winter NB highway.

Today I thought I would catch a bunch of church folks in Durham Bridge but the 11 AM photo was pretty tame. I guess they have better things to do in Durham Bridge.



I happened to go by the local highway camera, weather station mast today and snapped a photo. the mast / station is pretty inconspicuous and is easily missed / ignored.

I don't know what was up with this transport just outside of Saint John this morning but he was there for a while.

Set of Highway Camera Shots for Evening in NB 17.02.08

I thought I would try something different today and collect a dawn to dark set of photos for one camera. I chose Mount Farlagne and you can see the clouds lower and two separate storms come through.

Shots of the Day: 16.02.08 (Sunrise in NB)

Man, that was a beautiful and bitterly cold day. Same issues with the cameras as before with Shediac Bridge and Moosehorn Creek down and several cameras obscured by frost or snow. In fact, the sequence of frost receeding across the lens of the Aroostook River camera was kinda neat.

Today we ask the question: If you are a genius traffic engineer setting up a traffic camera perhaps it shouldn't be set up so that the rising or setting sun shines directly into the camera? We have today a selection from early this morning that demonstrate this problem but actually are very nice once you heglect the glare.

Flicker set for today