Sunday, February 14, 2021

More Snow in the Desert

 


We went hiking at White Tank Regional Park on a rainy January morning--complete with thunder and lightning.  I had a good rain jacket on, but I was pretty much soaked everywhere else when the rain stopped at the wind came up.  And boy did it rage.  My wet hands and legs started getting colder and colder.  And then, suddenly:  hail.  The wind whipped it so hard against us it felt like buckshot.  I don't think I've ever been caught out in such vicious hail.  The little balls of ice started collecting along the sides of the trail.  In Phoenix!  By the time we got back to the car, my hands were so cold and numb that  I almost couldn't get the key in the lock and then almost couldn't turn it once I did.  It took about ten minutes of warming up our hands in the car before we could even use them to open our sandwich bags.  I've been on much, much colder hikes in colder climates.  But on those hikes I had gloves.  Or snow but no rain. What an adventure!

So...half an hour after our hands thawed out, here came the sun.  After our car-nic, I took another trail and...this is what I saw:     


Two hours later, in shady, rocky parts of a slightly higher elevation trail, I found little piles of unmelted hail.  




Fantastic hike!

One of the eponymous white tanks:




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