Quick Road trip

We have been away on a brief road trip - over to I-25; north to Loveland, Colorado; back to Albuquerque; west on I-40 to Winslow, Arizona; and back to Tucson via Highway 87 through Payson. The overall word for this trip was "dry!" The Southwest is very brown; rampant overgrazing was apparent almost all the way; the only part of trip that was through country not beset by drought was from Colorado Springs north. We returned today to find very high-based thunderstorms moving north from the Catalinas. Before 5 pm a storm moved across north Tucson, with intense cloud-to-ground lightning and brief showers. There was 0.03" here at the house - the only rain of the past week, since a Trace on Sunday the 10th. Some photos from yesterday and today are below.

Small lenticular clouds yesterday west of Flagstaff; view from the Lowell Observatory.

The old, abandoned launch facility from when the NWS took upper-air soundings at the airport in Winslow, Arizona. The site was relocated to the new NWS facility west of Flagstaff about 10 years or so ago. The long record of upper-air data from the high, open desert environment of Winslow has been replaced by a short-period record of data from the higher, forested, mountain environment of the current site. Yet another site whose data series has been disrupted by a NWS relocation.

The two photos above were taken this morning at the historic Winslow-Lindbergh Regional Airport. The airport was constructed in 1929 and paid for by Howard Hughes, as a stop along the routes of what would become TWA. The airport was designed by Charles A. Lindbergh. For many years this was the only all-weather airport between Albuquerque and Los Angeles. At the top is the current entrance to the terminal, and below is a shot of the terminal from out on the tarmac.