Today began with bright sun and finished with heavy clouds and snowstorms. March is supposed to go out like a lamb, not a polar bear!
At the mid point of a short hike today the clouds were very interesting and so I brought back some photos of them. (I have a huge weakness for clouds!) The first three are over the Coeur d’Alene mountains, and the last over the Cabinet mountains, all taken from one vantage point inside the Cabinets about seven hundred feet above the valley floor. (The peak partially hidden by a snowstorm in the first photo is about a mile higher than the valley.)
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Our snow was in the morning, then clouds this afternoon. But none as boisterous and unrestrained as these.
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Comment by Pinhole — March 30, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
our lion like March weather has consisted of strong winds. thankfully this weekend they were not blowing as heavily. I am ready for that lamb like weather!
I think I like the first and third picts here best, though of course all are nice!
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Comment by silken — March 30, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
Pinhole,
It’s snowing again at the moment, so I don’t know what it will do later. If the roads get bad this might be another night when I get to drive around with lights and siren. I sure hope not!
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Comment by montucky — March 30, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Silken,
Yes, I’m glad you didn’t have weather like this for your tri yesterday! I would also think you wind might be a tad warmer than ours. It’s blowing pretty good now at 32º. I will look back at this very fondly in late August!
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Comment by montucky — March 30, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
Nature sure is awesome and beautiful – Those clouds are stunning! Here in Minnesota March is going out like a lion – we are expecting upward of 7 inches tomorrow – if it were January or February, that would be no big deal, but it was 50 degrees here and we just lost most of our snow today.
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Comment by Sandy — March 30, 2008 @ 9:46 pm
You are just getting buried with the snow this year! We are expected to get up towards 50 later this week too, which will be nice because for the last 4 days or so it hasn’t left the 30’s. It’s a little ironic, but our tall mountains her kind of shield us from the heavier snowfalls, especially in spring. They will often catch a foot or so of it and here in the valleys we get only a trace. I don’t think I’d especially like 7 inches right now!
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Comment by montucky — March 30, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
Brilliant shots – I think anyone who lives so closely to mts. has to love clouds only because they are huge and mighty. The coolest thing in the world is watching the clouds actually build on top of a mt. It’s almost like the one that first show up and slow to leave and the other ones just roll right on top of them to create massive columns. It’s very cool. We’re getting funky snow storms too – mostly they melt off in the day. The ground isn’t freezing which I just find odd… so whenever it melts it’s greener then before the snow fell. I am finding this completely facinating (don’t trust it enough to plant yet) but I’m loving watching the grass sprout!
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Comment by aullori — March 31, 2008 @ 12:09 am
when I woke up today at 6 it was 71 degrees!!
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Comment by silken — March 31, 2008 @ 7:57 am
Lori,
Yes, especially in the summer, the tall mountains create their own clouds and it’s wonderful to watch. I especially love them in late summer when they turn into thunderstorms. We’ve been getting down into the teens at night, so the ground surface freezes, then melts around noon, but we’re also getting a lot of green. Hiking yesterday, the ground was frozen and hard when I went up, and soft and a little muddy on the way back down.
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Comment by montucky — March 31, 2008 @ 8:15 am
Such massive, clouds, such texture, Want to reach in and squeeze. I DO love ‘your’ mountains. (They DO belong to you, right?) Hmm… maybe they belong to all of us?
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Comment by barbara — March 31, 2008 @ 8:17 am
Silken,
71! We haven’t seen that since October. We had an overnight low of 19º and a half inch of new snow with huge flakes still coming down now. We weren’t supposed to get any snow, but heavy snow was forecast for about a hundred miles south of us.
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Comment by montucky — March 31, 2008 @ 8:17 am
Barbara,
You’re right, they’re beautiful, and they do belong to all of us. The higher parts of every one are in a National Forest. I love to see the signs that read “Entering Lolo National Forest”, and especially at a trail head or a gate across an old road, the ones that read “Road restrictions. No motorized vehicles allowed to protect wildlife habitat and to prevent road damage and soil erosion. Non-motorized use welcome”.
I just wish there were more folks concerned with taking good care of them!
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Comment by montucky — March 31, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Beautiful cloud formations. I especially like the first picture, with the snowstorm coming down on the peak. Our high temperatures are supposed to be in the mid 40’s, and it’s supposed to rain for the next several days. Hopefully that rain won’t turn into snow.
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Comment by AK_Adventurer — March 31, 2008 @ 5:26 pm
We had similar clouds again today after waking up to new snow. We too are supposed to have temps in the 40’s but today it didn’t make it out of the 30’s. With our low temps I’m actually hoping for more snow rather than rain of the freezing kind.
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Comment by montucky — March 31, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
Great cloud pictures.
My brother in Portland reports that they were out on the trail last weekend wearing snow shoes. He didn’t send me any cloud pictures though.
Malcolm
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Comment by knightofswords — April 1, 2008 @ 10:10 am
I guess all over the northwest we have lots of late snow this year. On the news last night they said the Big Mountain ski area just outside of Whitefish has had 431 inches this year! After 10 years of drought I’m sure happy to see that! Yesterday I hiked up to a small meadow on the mountain above my house to check out a spring there and found it full and overflowing for the first time since 1997!
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Comment by montucky — April 1, 2008 @ 10:25 am
Very lovely photos! and Yeah! Water!!!
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Comment by winterwoman — April 2, 2008 @ 4:47 am
Yew, water is the big thing, isn’t it? Through the rest of April our high country will still be accumulating snow pack so it can keep up its delivery of water through the summer. This year has been excellent because of the freeze and melt cycles. The snow pack up high is deep and very dense (icy) and the streams are very low. We’ve had very little runoff so far except for a little local low altitude melting. Should be a good summer for those down stream!
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Comment by montucky — April 2, 2008 @ 9:56 am