A Frozen Forest Above Santa Fe

Yesterday afternoon I drove up to Ski Santa Fe to watch the forest as the sun began to set. 

The Santa Fe mountains seen from below. A few cloud shadows along the mountains ridge.

Shadows were already beginning to lengthen and fall on the opposite side of the road among some aspen.

Continuing up the mountain the amount of light began to decrease and the shadows lengthened even more.

I reached the base of the ski area and the temperature, according to my car, was 15 degree F but not much wind. It was almost like being dumped on top of a completely frosted cake; the raven on the top of the tree like a decoration.

Near-by trees exhibited their white frozen beauty against the blue New Mexico sky.

Above me the mountain with its clouds, a bit of blue sky and now shadows beginning to creep up the mountain side.

The mood of the day began to change as the sun continued to set.

The color change, at first subtle, began to become noticeable.

Trees beginning to catch the warmer colors of the sun with the white mountain behind growing to a warmer white.

The tops of trees near-by still getting some bright sun.

The sun began to set in the west. The trees became more silhouette-like and the blue in the sky darkened.

A pink cast in the clouds against the blue sky above the mountains.  

Twilight

Old Farm Equipment I have Seen

My wife and I recently went to see an exhibit, Becoming Van Gogh, at the Denver Art Museum. On the way to Denver we drove past many old abandoned farms and I took photos of old farm equipment that I could see from our car speeding along at 65 mph. 

We drove past coyotes,

past many windmills,

 

and past abandoned farm equipment.

 

 

The photo of a piece of equipment shown above appears to consist of an old hay rake and another part with large straight spikes. The latter part would appear to stab or pierce the hard earth as it was pulled across a field. Now I wish I could go back and look for the manufacturers name.

Understanding Albedo & Aspen Leaves On Snow

A few years ago, while hiking on a partially snow covered trail at about 9,000 feet in October, I noticed Aspen leaves had fallen onto the snow. Some of those leaves lay on the surface of the snow while other leaves appeared as if they had pushed the snow down in a manner exactly representing the shape of the leaves. 

Of course a single Aspen leaf is not heavy enough to compress the snow. It appeared to me that the leaves had absorbed enough sunlight to heat and melt the snow resulting in a depression in the snow with the leaf on top of the depression.

This of course is on a tiny scale what is happening in places like Greenland. The term albedo refers to the ability of a surface to reflect light. Pure clean snow has a very high albedo whereas snow covered with millions of soot particles has a much lower albedo and in fact in the summer many of these places actually melt holes in the ice creating uncountable  pools of water. 

I recently viewed the movie Chasing Ice and the photographer/scientist James Balog. He photographed many of those holes along with the dirt they contained. 

His website is http://extremeicesurvey.org/