Storm over the Chiricahua Mountains viewed from the New Mexico Bootheel.
(Click images to view larger)
Southern New Mexico has been in drought since we moved from Wyoming over two years ago. In normal years, the Arizona monsoon brings summer storms, blocking the sun and cooling temperatures. Even then, this is a sunny place, so it's exciting when rains come as they have over the last few days thanks to two low-pressure systems that swept from the California coast across the Southwest and then into the Plains. After rain, locals check their rain gauges and send texts to each other. It can feel almost competitive.
“How much did you get??”
“We got 0.7 inches. How about you?”
The sunshine is nothing to complain about, especially for those of us who love the arid West. For most of us, sunny skies and expansive vistas beat the dreary gray and oppressive undergrowth of more humid places.
Photographically, startling clear blue skies are less interesting than dramatic storms or even well-spaced summer cumuli, so I was excited last weekend while driving home from visiting friends in Bisbee, Arizona when a storm engulfed the Chiricahua Mountains of Southern Arizona. By then, we were in New Mexico’s bootheel, looking west at the mountains where the sun poked through the clouds just enough to highlight a few places in the landscape. It was spectacular, and I stopped to shoot a few photos over the barbed wire fence beside the highway.
Roadside view.
The big picture.
Moody version of the storm
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