Stormy Mondays

March 4, 2024

Natural mural of lichens & moss on cleaved basalt along the Columbia Plateau trail between Lamont and Revere, WA

A dynamic sky that delivers awe (and hailstones…)

There is something about March, at this latitude. It’s still winter by the calendar but with enough thermal juice in the afternoons to lift thunderheads that blossom like white camellias and unleash veils of rain, snow, sleet, hail, but also graupel—a union of snow and supercooled water droplets. It’s one of my favorite words, in part because it is not in every dictionary. It real life I spent five minutes scraping graupel that had frozen to my windshield and windshield wipers yesterday morning.

That said, and with gratitude for T-Bone Walker’s timeless blues composition (1947)…

Virga for Bachelor Prairie

Spring storm at Dry Coulee, Grant County

“Storm tracks” (2020)

Gathering storm in the scablands east of Sprague Lake

Sweep of sunshine behind a spring storm in the Telford tract in Lincoln County

Windswept bunchgrass above the Snake River in Franklin County

“The light behind the storm” (2018)

In the last of the light in west Spokane

Stormy epilogue near Amber Lake

—tjc