March 14, 2006

Snow on the Mountains

I went for a short drive today after work, to take a couple pictures of the snow left over from the weekend storm. This is one of the best ones: Snow on Four Peaks. I really should have gone a couple days ago; the snow is already melting quite a bit. But, let me tell you, it's kinda cool to drive east in short sleeves with the window open, and see the snow off in the distance! The paper today said that this is the first time that snow has fallen as low as 2000 feet altitude in the Four Peaks area in many years.

On Sunday, I tried to talk Tom into driving up to Flagstaff. We decided to stay in, and it was probably a good thing- I turned on a local weather report, and they were reporting snow still falling, with 24 inches already on the ground! Altogether, Flagstaff got 30 inches of snow; Prescott got between 9 and 12 inches. Here in Gilbert, we got about 1 1/2 inches of rain between Friday night and Sunday morning; Queen Creek, which is much farther southeast (but still considered a suburb), reported 2.91 inches. The paper said this rainfall puts us at 70% of normal, which has lowered the fire risk somewhat. That's a good thing- but, I hope this bit of rain also helps the spring blooms, since I want to see some wildflowers out there soon!!!

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