What a great way to end another New Mexico storm day. We immersed in the luxurious smell of a desert soaked by heavy rain, the gravelly scrubland soil strangely muddy underfoot, skies painted in warm pastels and indigo shadows. Beyond and above, a natural fireworks display beyond Bulldog Mesa (actually, a butte) had a grateful audience of two, as Elke and I alternated between clicking the camera shutters and gazing in rapt admiration. The more distant butte is Tucumcari Mountain, a landmark for travelers to our north along I-40 and old Route 66. In these parts, all the land once was level with the Caprock tops of the tallest buttes. The Canadian River drainage has taken most of it away throughout a few hundred thousand years’ worth of similar rainstorms, uncommon but highly erosive events in this arid climate. Before the big dams and through many millennia, countless cubic miles of eastern New Mexico has washed downstream past Norman, Oklahoma, and onward, to build part of the Mississippi River delta. The wind scattered much of the rest as dust across the southern plains and points northeast, as far away as the mid-Atlantic region.
7 NNE Quay NM (4 Jun 3) looking NE
35.0555, -103.74Beyond Buttes
What a great way to end another New Mexico storm day. We immersed in the luxurious smell of a desert soaked by heavy rain, the gravelly scrubland soil strangely muddy underfoot, skies painted in warm pastels and indigo shadows. Beyond and above, a natural fireworks display beyond Bulldog Mesa (actually, a butte) had a grateful audience of two, as Elke and I alternated between clicking the camera shutters and gazing in rapt admiration. The more distant butte is Tucumcari Mountain, a landmark for travelers to our north along I-40 and old Route 66. In these parts, all the land once was level with the Caprock tops of the tallest buttes. The Canadian River drainage has taken most of it away throughout a few hundred thousand years’ worth of similar rainstorms, uncommon but highly erosive events in this arid climate. Before the big dams and through many millennia, countless cubic miles of eastern New Mexico has washed downstream past Norman, Oklahoma, and onward, to build part of the Mississippi River delta. The wind scattered much of the rest as dust across the southern plains and points northeast, as far away as the mid-Atlantic region.
7 NNE Quay NM (4 Jun 3) looking NE
35.0555, -103.74