Winter Warm-up Wednesday

I'm posting this for my sun and warmth-deprived garden compadres in the Pacific NW, but even myself at times. Though winters are usually sunny here, it can get cold at times, unusually so in many recent years.

I meant to post this in winter. Enjoy these scenes anyway, sure to warm up your bones!

The view from the tram down to the coolest part of Abq. High 60's up there after our morning hike to the top; mid 90's below, in a 20 minute tram flight down 4000'+ in elevation. It was early June.

Looking up from the same tram base, except it's the hottest month in Abq history -
July 2003. At high noon, it's already 100F+. One of my sisters and brother-in-law were
visiting, after ignoring little brother's suggestion to visit in May - back in the day,
that was sage advice. To help them cool off while visiting, we took the tram up
to the top. Low 70's on top, but we eventually had to return.

The rattlesnakes and lizards stay in the shade many summer days, contrary to
popular opinion (they sun themselves more in fall and spring). It's silent.

Madrean-influenced chaparral and desert grassland, with evergreen Gray
Oak, Hairy Mountain Mahogany, Beargrass, and Engelmann Prickly Pear. And
countless boulders condensing dew trapping runoff water to help sustain
those xeric plants in much dryness - infernal summer to chilly winter.

June 30, 2012 at my house - 105F outside, 83F inside and far more pleasant than outside, as I designed in air conditioned / ceiling fan comfort. We average a few days every early summer over 100F, but valley and west mesa areas of town get that off and on for 2+ weeks. Not exactly aspen and fir country, it's the foothills on the upper edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.

It gets hotter; Albuquerque is high desert, in the highest and coolest reaches of the desert southwest, actually.

El Paso is certainly so much hotter than Albuquerque, since after all, it's south of I-40; enlightened landscape architects from here specify plants from Phoenix on projects there. Yes, and average winters kill many of them, but I digress. It's at least a few degrees hotter in summer than way up in the polar, 35N latitude reaches of Abq. (snicker)

Seriously, El Paso and Las Cruces often get 2-3 solid weeks over 100F, not just off and on like parts of Abq. But still high desert.

There is nothing in that clear air to stop the angry mid-June sun from searing the land. Nothing. I remember the silence, as I snapped site photos for a future school project I was hired for; only one Mourning Dove cooed.

El Paso had been 105F+ the preceding and following weeks; one day it hit 112F! Unusual for there, but not unheard of. To the aforementioned landscape architects, I must be in low desert now - bring out the Phoenix plants! But in reality, it's 4700' elevation Chihuahuan Desert, not much lower than Abq, 500' from one mile above sea level, but further south at 32N latitude.

But it still gets hotter - much hotter.

Now to the real low desert...4000' lower than the El Paso site, due west 700+ miles.

A canyon with a grove of wild California or Desert Fan Palm near a spring. San Diego County, California, plenty of sand but not the beach side of their county! That's Anza Borrego Desert State Park, one flaming August day in 1989. I was bummed about the cool summer San Diego was plagued with my first year living there, so I drove 90 minutes east.

And warm up I did!

There were some wildfires in the nearby mountains, adding to the effect of a hazy, hot day. When I stopped for a late lunch in nearby Borrego Springs, the thermometer was something like 115F - a typical summer day there. This part of the Sonoran Desert, the Colorado Desert Subdivision, doesn't get just a few weeks over 100F, but rather, 3-4 months often above 110F, rarely at 120F. Real low desert!

My waitress - the only waitress, as it was dead that day - told me how their population drops to several hundred each May. Their payback is November to March; I hear the local grapefruits sold by vendors on Christmas Circle are awesomely sweet.

Time to head back to mild San Diego! 

Maybe I'll appreciate our now-cooler, more capricious springs here in Abq. You?