Thursday, June 15, 2006
Summer Storms in the Desert
Walking through the desert conjures up many visions: thorny, spiny plants, quick moving lizards, earth tones of various shades of brown, the threat of a rattlesnake in a rocky area. What do you think of? What one does not usually think of is water on the landscape. Water the liquid of life, yet so seldom seen in a desert environment.
Water does come from rain with the wettest time of the year being in the summer months. When big storms form with lightning clashing and thunder booming across the desert it is an awesome sight to see and hear. Some of my most memorable moments in the natural world have been watching a storm build up with huge thunderheads and then lightning and thundering occurring with a symphony of sounds. Also some of my scariest moments have happen when caught in a storm with no place to seek safe shelter. These storms with rain occur intermittently. However water can be consistently found in the desert at seeps or if a large enough volume is present a spring can form. Seeps and spring occur primarily where water reaches the surface from sources that can go long distances back into rock layers and the ground. The desert swallows up the rain water and over period of time it gives some back through seeps and springs.
--Doug Buehler, Park Ranger, Guadalupe Mountains National Park
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# posted by Unknown @ 11:47 AM 
