Weather: Sunday it began raining around 7:30 pm, and continued after I went to bed. When I awoke at 3:30 am, mist was still in the 35 degree air. When I woke again at 6:30 am, three inches of snow covered every surface. The temperature was 29 degrees F.
Snow lingers on the north and west sides of buildings and fences because an arctic air mass parked east of the Sangre de Cristo which had kept afternoon temperatures low. During the night moisture freezes on my path from the house, and I’m forced to stay indoors. That has induced a sense of foreboding when the sun goes down early because I know I’m shut in. I no longer can go out to see stars that are bright against the clear black sky.
Last useful snow: 11/13. Week’s low: 13 degrees F. Week’s high: 43 degrees F in the shade. Winds were up to 31 mph in Los Alamos on Sunday and Monday.
What’s still green: Needles on pines, piñon, cultivated and native junipers, yews, arborvitae; leaves on cliff rose, Japanese honeysuckle, Japanese boxwood, yuccas, red hot pokers, vinca, bindweed, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, alfilerillo, sweet violets, bouncing Bess, pink evening primroses, coral bells, Saint John’s wort, Queen Anne’s lace, tansy, lance-leaf coreopsis, white and yellow yarrows; blades on cheat grass; bases of blue flax, Mexican hats, needle grasses
What’s still gray or gray-green: Leaves on fern bushes, four-winged saltbushes, winterfat, chamisa, snow-in-summer, Siberian catmint
What’s turning purple or red: Leaves on coral beard tongues; stems on apricot, fruiting crab apple
What leaves are dying but haven’t dropped: Apples and related fruit trees, roses, weeping willows, Russian olives, privet. Tree of heaven seed heads still are in place.
What still has fruit: Apples, pyracantha, privet. Juncos were in my flowering crab apple on Thursday. I don’t know if Russian olives still had fruit; mine did not bloom this year.
Animal sightings: Birds larger than robins have been flitting past my windows; footprints in snow near the native junipers
Tasks: People who were lulled by warm weather must have been scrambling this week. I noticed what appeared to be new stacks of fire wood when I drove into town on Tuesday. No one was selling truck loads in the usual places.
Weekly update: Snow lands on horizontal surfaces. Even when it is blown, it ultimately stays on flatter planes.
Trees have developed different techniques for dealing with the unwanted weight. The ideal way for deciduous species is dropping leaves before the snow arrives. Then it only lands on horizontal branches and in crevices where those branches join with trunks.
When I drove into town Tuesday I found most trees had shed their loads in the winds that preceded the precipitation. Among the native cottonwoods and the naturalized Siberian elms there was some variation. Those trees that were growing in isolated areas were bare, but those near buildings, which emitted or reflected heat, still had leaves.
For some reason, fruit trees in the rose family still had their leaves in orchards. Apples and my fruiting crab apples tend to put out vertical branches that don’t collect snow. However, their leaves do. The weight bent the leaves, but not enough to affect the limbs.
Others species have leaves connected by flexible stems (petioles). Snow fell on the horizontal branches of my apricots, and pushed the leaves down where they were unable to support anything.
The evergreens have similar differences. My neighbor’s arborvitae is upright. Snow massed where it could toward the top, but generally slipped away lower down.
Needles on tall junipers are narrower, but still relatively dense. It and arborvitae are both in the cypress family, but one is native and the other comes from the far north. Snow collected on the boughs which then bent.
Only dead trees are completely dormant. Even those with no leaves continue to generate heat as they process sun and moisture, albeit at lower rates. This heat begins melting away snow, even before the sun comes out.
So much snow fell on Sunday that not everything could be removed by sundown. Moisture remained on leaves that turned to frost the next morning.
Monday’s sun absorbed the last of the vernal moisture, and the only frost since has been on my wooden porch and metal car. Ice has been forming under snow that is warmed but does not disappear. It refreezes in the night.
Notes on photographs:
1. Two Tamarix rubra ‘Summer Glory,’ 14 November 2022.
2. Fruiting crab apple (Malus sylvestris ‘Firecracker’), 14 November 2022.
3. Apricot (Prunus armeniaca ‘Blenheim-Royal’), 14 November 2022.
4. Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), 14 November 2022.
5. One-seeded native juniper (Juniperus monosperma), 14 November 2022.
6. Cliff rose (Purshia mexicana), 14 November 2022.
7. Same cliff rose, 15 November 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment