Blue hour appeared while I was waiting for a sunset explosion that never manifested; the clouds in the west ultimately were just too heavy. But there was a nice bit of light highlighting Utah’s La Sal Mountains, and Winona prettied up the scene nicely.
What follows is a random selection of cellphone pix from a couple of evenings ago in wild, woolly and very windy Spring Creek Basin.
First sego lily of the season! That I’ve seen, anyway. It was SO windy, the flower was whipping around like crazy, so I tried to hold it still for my phone. It’s always a bit of a crap shoot to try to take pix of small things with my phone because I can’t see at all whether the *thing* is in focus or whether it’s the background.
Case in point: I took several pix of this beauty, within a couple of feet of the first one, and only the last one was in focus (that could have been the wind). I adore these lilies – in the desert! These seemed smaller than usual, but I’m glad to see them.
While the pix of the sego lilies seem to suggest that it was sunny, mostly we had these crazy, wildly dramatic clouds looming over the basin. These are mammatus clouds. Looking eastish-northeastish.
Google AI says:
Mammatus clouds are distinct, pouch-like cloud protrusions that hang downward from the base of a larger cloud, usually a towering cumulonimbus. Named after the Latin word for “udder” or “breast”, these stunning formations are fascinating for their unique shape and the rare meteorological process that creates them.
How They Form
Unlike most clouds, which are created by rising air (updrafts), mammatus clouds are formed by sinking air (downdrafts). [1]
What They Indicate
While their ominous, alien-like appearance might make them look like the beginning of a severe storm or tornado, mammatus clouds are generally a sign that the worst part of the storm has already passed or is off in the distance.
Key Characteristics
In our case, they appeared around three hours before sunset, so we didn’t get the color, but they’re still pretty amazing to see, even if they also did NOT bring us any rain.
This was taken at about the same time, now looking eastish to southeastish. And quite a bit later, it looked REALLY rainy out beyond our local horizon. So hopefully somebody somewhere got some wet stuff.
Have to have a pony walking the skyline. 🙂 He was heading to the Spring Creek arroyo (down to the left), and pretty soon, his band followed. Looked like it was raining somewhere out in that direction, too (westish-southwestish).
And at the very end of the day (an hour or more later than the last pic), a pretty glorious and somewhat unexpected (and *very* brief) shot of sunset brilliance from the west end of the basin looking westish-northwestish. There were horses immediately behind me, but they were already in the shade of the hill, and that side was already fairly darkrainydusty (? did I mention the howling wind?).
Even under the “worst” conditions, there’s always such beauty. 🙂
Tuesday was a wild and crazy day … and that was just the weather. It was ultimately a successful day, though at least one part left me shaking my head at, well, how life unfolds. And it was a reminder that sometimes the smallest things, and the simplest things, are the most enjoyable of all.
From yesterday’s post, are you wondering what graupel looks like? (Thanks, Valerie, for your comment that led to this post!)
What? I hear you asking. That looks like snow or rain, you’re saying (zoom in to see the streaks). Look on the ground in the lower right corner. I was backed in under a (dead) tree to sit out one wave of it (it wasn’t very hard, and it didn’t last long) at that little side “road” to Disappointment Road, which is across the whole pic. See the little white “balls”?
AI says this: “Graupel, or soft hail, forms when supercooled water droplets freeze onto falling snowflakes, creating soft, small white pellets (
I liked this part: Types of Graupel
While commonly called graupel, it is sometimes referred to as:
Matsaaruti: A term used in the Nunavik region of Canada to describe wet, soft snow pellets.
I encourage you to Google “graupel” because there’s a lot more. Or check this NOAA description of hail types.
Another pic from the same location as the first pic, looking pretty much straight north at what I call west-of-favorite hill (because it’s, you know, west of what I call favorite hill, which I so-named because once upon a very long time ago, “the pintos” really favored that hill and could very often be found atop it).
Also from the same spot, looking eastish again as the graupel wave recedes, driven by a strong out-of-the-south wind (I lost track, but at least three, maybe four went over us Tuesday morning). You can see Brumley Point very distinctly, submarine ridge and McKenna Peak to the left it it, and you can’t quite make out Temple Butte. If you slide back up to the first pic, Temple Butte is juuuuuust barely visible at far left, just under the power lines. And yes, the sunshine IS coming back out over the rest of us while the wave pushes north to the east.
With Artemis II and its remarkable human beings on board, their mission, their accomplishments, the images they sent back, from space looking home, in mind … and realizing the absolute tiny-ness of this one itty-bitty part of our great, wide, wild, wonderful, big blue marble … ain’t Earth gorgeous? Now you can see Temple Butte’s promontory emerging from behind Brumley Point (see the graupel/moisture evidence shining below its rimrocks?) and submarine ridge and McKenna Peak. And though you can’t see them in this pic, there were two groups of mustangs out there. Across the road and on the other side of that fence IS Spring Creek Basin.
Anybody know what this prickly little caterpillar is called? I’m not sure of the plant it’s on, either.
I tried a lot, but I could NOT get the eye end (far left – is that an eye?) in focus. Of course, I didn’t know that in the field, not having my eyeball glasses on and looking through the glare of my phone screen, but I did try a number of shots with high hopes. One of our BLM range guys recently posted a pic of the same caterpillar, but he’s a plant guy (and an extraordinarily awesome one), not a bug guy, so I’m sure he can tell me the plant, if not the bug (!). If I reach him for an ID before this posts (or even after), I’ll update.
** Update from Ryan, BLM rangeland management specialist and all-around plant guy!:
“Cool that you’re seeing the same caterpillar! [He saw the same kind recently in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, southwest of Spring Creek Basin.] I’m very curious as to what species of butterfly/moth they will turn into, I’m not good at insect ID but will ask Nate West [BLM wildlife biologist]. The plant that those are on is a mustard species called Alyssum simplex, commonly just called madwort. It’s a pretty prevalent non-native annual that is really common around here, unfortunately. It’s a beautiful picture of the hair-structure on the caterpillar!” Thanks, Ryan!
The reason you can’t see Utah’s La Sal Mountains in this pic – way northwest of Spring Creek Basin, from the very far southeastern part of Spring Creek Basin – is because the rain/graupel/snow wasn’t through sending waves over them. 🙂 You CAN see, from right to left, Round Top, Flat Top (looks sloping), Filly Peak and the south-facing rimrocks. Disappointment Road is over to the left somewhere (not far)
From here, we’re looking over not much of the southern part of Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area (the pic above this one has a perspective to the right of this one) but a lot of the south/southwestern part of Disappointment Valley (most but not all of the pinon-juniper woodlands as far as the eye can see). The near pinon-juniper is within Spring Creek Basin.
From the same spot now looking back to the south/southeast at another little rain/snow/graupel-fall, toward the Glade and Benchmark Lookout (hi, Rick and Linda! (I think they’re not at the fire lookout tower quite yet)). The near hills and pinon-juniper are all within Spring Creek Basin. The far, thickly treed ridges are partly (middle-ish ground) part of upper Disappointment Valley and partly (farther) part of San Juan National Forest lands beyond Disappointment Valley and its watershed.
And what the heck was I doing at the high end of a long drop? See the horse trail? 🙂 I was following where the sure-footed have gone before me (and not for the first time).
The above are in order of how I took them … hours apart from first to last.
And because you came here for the mustangs …
Mysterium, modeling her scruffy-chic look (fashion designers, take note – ha!) below Temple Butte. 🙂 Yes, those are a couple of cuts on the inside of her left hind leg, but she’ll heal quickly, as mustangs do!
Thanks, as always, for coming along for glimpses of this special world. 🙂
Alegre does the slow saunter through the greasewood. She’d been grazing away from the band, and I took advantage of waiting for her to catch up, catching her as she walked through the backlighting and past the mountains.
Mustang. (Skywalker)
Cliffs. (rimrocks on the western boundary)
Mountains. (La Sals. Utah)
All right, all right, all is right with the world. 🙂
Going back a couple of days, to the time before the wind when the mountains were still clear on the northwestern horizon.
I read an article recently about how lack of dust on the snow of the mountains is a good thing. … And it is (dust causes the snow to melt more rapidly). … But I imagine that those same researchers will find a pretty “good” layer of dust after this weekend, and that just joins the bad news of “skimpy snow” (according to the article) to begin with.
Still, we have to admire the positive, and that’s Flash and all our other wild ones in that magnificent landscape. … And pray for a wet(ter???) spring.
Corazon’s band was in the same area that evening, and even though you can’t see his face and eyes, I liked this pic as he led his band away toward water.
Gaia leads Juniper and Mysterium up a trail.
It looks pretty parched out there, but signs of spring are *everywhere*.
With any hope at all, by the time you take a gander at this post this morning, our world will be white … according to the forecast Thursday afternoon! I’m not sure I believe it … but I’m hoping with all my might!
Update forthcoming (hopefully a good update) … !
Back to current conditions, though this pic of Winona was taken the day before the snow-that-stuck-day (as opposed to the blowing-snow-didn’t-stick-at-all-days).
So peaceful … but we need a lot more of those snow-sticking days for the good of the rest of our year!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 