Tuesday, February 10, 2009

spine-chilling in Tucson

Tucson received a nice light snowfall this morning. I took an optional holiday from work -- drove out to Saguaro National Park at 7 am to wander around and take a few snaps. The picture above is looking North across Tucson at the Santa Catalina mountains, the top of which received a fresh 18 inches of snow. Where I'm standing received maybe an inch or so, melting pretty fast.

The saguaros were all wearing snow caps.

Looking toward the Rincon Mountains which border the east side of the Tucson valley.

I saw a solitary deer walking along the loop road. We made eye contact and were both momentarily relieved to see other warm prey in the area, given the number of mountain lion warning signs.

This sleeping ocotillo was still clutching its teddy-bear to stay warm...
The low elevation snow was melting pretty fast

Winter barrel cactus sprouts anyone? Perhaps on a salad?

4 comments:

  1. Incredible Pictures! I'm so glad you took that optional holiday....did we actually get snow in town? I didn't see any by the time I woke up...the mountains are gorgeous though...your first picture is breathtaking!

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  2. kim -- I'm not quite sure what areas of town got snow... From what I heard it may have been coming down and melting just as fast early in the morning.

    SNP (east) at Broadway was just wet. SNP (east) vistor center had about a 1/2 to 1 inch on vegetation/walls, but ground was mostly just wet, seemed to be melting pretty fast.

    I heard the Vail area further southeast got a lot.

    The sun coming down the Catalinas while standing in the shade of the Rincons was pretty neat.

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  3. Hi Warren,

    I really like your pix of snow in the desert. I didn't think of taking that day off :-(. Those pics are amazing. I did not get any snow in my side of town. Thanks for visting my website.

    Diem

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