Let It Snow

Who says it never snows in the desert? Not me, as is evidenced by this shot of a little winter storm that rolled through here yesterday. It started out as rain and sleet around noon, which continued on all afternoon, then turned to snow and kept coming. This was only the beginning.


Here's a closer view of the stop sign just outside my booth window and its icicle-ish trail of slush.


As the storm progresses, the temperature begins to drop. This causes the sleet to begin sticking to my front window, hindering my vision down my incoming lane. Even though I went out and scraped off the sleet just a short while ago, it's back at it again -- and I have the heater on inside! Eventually, the entire window would be frosted over, but I was on my way out by then.


At lunch, I fired Pepe up and drove him back to the booth to avoid having to walk the 200 yards in the driving rain and sleet. When that turned to driving snow, I began to have second thoughts about my decision, as I know how squirrelly he gets in slick weather. Sure enough, as I made the turn around the booth to head back to the Visitor Center to close out my day, his rear end lost it and spun us around almost 180 degrees -- and I wasn't even going that fast. Luckily, I managed to pull him out of it before we smacked into the booth. He'd hate Maine in the winter.


One last shot for the day as I'm headed out the door for home. I took some more photos on my way back into work this morning, so those will be up next as soon as I can download them. All in all, we got 2-3" of sleet/snow which totalled up to 1.14" of precipitation, when the stuff in the rain gauge (the official one at the VC, not my little glass tube one) was melted down. Not too shabby a storm for November.


The next morning, I stepped out the front door to find my poor little desert willow's young shoots drooped and resting on the front porch railing. Look at all that snow!


Walking to work, I just couldn't help firing off a couple of shots of the snow-covered desert landscape, starting off with Persimmon Peak behind a bedecked yucca.


To the south stands the snowy expanse of the Rosillos Mountains, their tops shrouded in clouds of shredded cotton. They take on a whole different personality with snow on them.


Here we have a prickly pear portrait in snow. There's something so incongruous about a cactus with snow on it, don't you think?


By the time I got to the Visitor Center to start my day, the sun had begun to rise and color the clouds in subtle hues. This country just takes my breath away sometimes.


Arriving at the booth, I decided to update yesterday's photo looking back toward the Visitor Center. A much prettier day with lots of color and much more snow -- around 2-3" I'd say, giving us 1.14" of moisture in the rain gauge.


In the booth now, I just had to take a shot of the Persimmon Gap Ranch peak out of my booth's window, as it appears to float in the clouds. When I left Dallas in 1995 after 13 years of working in a camera store whose view was the back of an Exxon station, I vowed never to work in a place that didn't have a proper view. I'd say i've pretty much held to that, wouldn't you?