Kenneth Gourd, age 11, of West Warwick, Rhode Island, for his questions
Does it ever snow in the Mojave Desert?
Most visitors to the wondrous Mojave arrive during the summer. Then the sun beats down from the vast blue sky, with no more than one wispy white cloud in sight. Dust devils dance where the toasty colored ground swoops down the dips and up the slopes. True, the nights are much cooler, when the glittering stars stare down from a blue black velvet sky. But most summer visitors suspect the sizzling Mojave never gets cold enough or damp enough to snow. But it does.
This year, on January 3, two inches of snow fell on the town of Barstow. Barstow is right out there in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Victorville, near the edge of the desert, had three or four inches of snow during January. Old Andy knows first hand that snow does indeed fall on the Mojave Desert. Some years ago, he paid a midwinter visit to a desert resort called Twenty Nine Palms. And what do you know! He woke up one morning to find the ground covered with genuine snow.
These particular regions are fairly flat and the snow there is never very deep. What's more, usually it disappears before the sun climbs very high in the blue, blue sky. Some evaporates into the air. Some melts and the moisture sinks into the thirsty ground. But there are other parts of the great desert where snowfalls hang on for days and days.
One of these places is a 9,000 foot peak called Mount Baden Powell. Naturally, every Boy Scout knows for whom it was named. Actually, the Mojave is a bumpy place of ups and downs. And everywhere the rare winter snowfalls tend to linger for a while on the crests.
Deserts, like other places, have winter and summer seasons. However, low lying deserts in tropical zones have very mild winters, with little frost and perhaps no snows at all. The Mojave Desert of southeastern California is just outside the tropics and its average height above sea level is 2,000 feet. Here the winter brings frosts, often white frosts that add a snowy icing to the morning scenery.
Officially, the precipitation of a region includes rain, hail, snow and whatever other moisture falls from the clouds. The Mojave's average annual precipitation is only a few inches. And in some areas, no moisture falls for years and years. Most of it arrives in winter, in the form of cold, driving rain storms. But here and there, once in a while, con¬ditions are just right for snowflakes to fall on the Mojave.
This arid, sun drenched region, with its toasted dips and its toasted hills, is a place of great scenic beauty. If you visit it in summer or winter, you might see it as a lifeless wasteland. But this is far from true. The low growing bushes shelter birds and burrowing animals. Countless seeds sleep in the arid sand. There are tall, stiff Joshua trees looking like the bearded, desert dwelling prophets of Bible Days. They have lived and thrived for centuries, there in the great Mojave.
After a spell of early spring rains, the great desert changes almost over night from a wasteland to a wonderland. The dry lakes and streams fill with water populated with shrimps and little fishes. The sleeping seeds wake up and don a variety of blossoms cheek to cheek. For a short while, the desert scenery, high and low, is carpeted with flowery colors that rival the rainbow.