Chasing Stormlight into Midnight

Chasing Stormlight into Midnight

Midsummer weather conditions are occasionally interrupted by thunderstorms in northern Germany. These occur either as isolated thermal thunderstorms or as approaching weather fronts with organized squall lines. Such a thunderstorm front passed across northern Germany...
Spellbound in Silent Solitude

Spellbound in Silent Solitude

The ice age shaped Schaalsee stretches along the former inner-German border between Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. With a length of 14 km (8.7 miles) and a width of up to 5.4 km (3.4 miles), it is one of the deepest lakes in northern Germany with a...
In the Cloud Forest of Armored Fish

In the Cloud Forest of Armored Fish

The beech forests of the Kellerwald National Park surround the Edersee near Kassel on the eastern side of the Rheinisches Schiefergebirge mountains. The summit regions rise to 675 m (2.215 feet). The Kellerwald encloses one of the largest remaining beech forests in...
The Crown of the Forest

The Crown of the Forest

Mature beech trees reach a height of 30 to 45 meters (98 to 148 feet) and live for an astonishing 300 to 500 years. It is not uncommon for their trunk diameters to reach two meters (7 feet). Such large trees have extensive crowns and form a dense canopy that shrouds...
The Tree Cathedral

The Tree Cathedral

Until 10.000 years ago, northern Germany bordered the glacial margin of the Nordic ice cap. At this time of the Pleistocene, so much water was stored in the form of ice in the glacial system up to three kilometers thick, that the sea level was about 130 meters (427...