Stormy Skies

I know these aren't very good photos, but I want to show a different side of our skies today. To boast a little bit, we get around 300 sunny days a year in my area. This is because we're on the sheltered side of a major mountain range, so the mountains catch most of the weather. In the summer this can lead to thunderstorms building and moving over us, as I've shown in numerous other posts. And once in a while, the winds can turn around and force moisture against the mountains, leaving us in fog and low clouds. Here are some photos from a couple of weeks ago when this happened. The clouds always seem lower here since we're 7,500 feet (2.2 km) above sea level.

In the winter a weather pattern like this will occasionally drop as much as 4 feet of snow (over 100 cm) on our ridge in 24 hours; this might happen once every 5 years, but we'll get a number of falls in the 1 to 2 foot (30 to 60 cm) range each winter. But I'm happy to say that sunshine and boring sunsets like this one are much more common, even on days when a thunderstorm moves over.

For more photographs featuring the sky, visit the Skywatch Friday home page.