Snow on saguaros
— — the desert wearing a coat for an hour.
Not only on a wall.
“A few times each winter, a Pacific cold front drops the freezing line low enough that snow reaches the saguaros. It happens most often in the Tucson basin and the Catalina foothills, less often in Phoenix. The dusting holds for an hour or two after sunrise, then the desert sun takes it. The photographs that come out of those mornings are the ones Arizonans send to friends in colder places, with no caption.
Snow on saguaros, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
The saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) grows only in the Sonoran Desert — southern Arizona, a strip of southeastern California, and the Mexican state of Sonora. Saguaro National Park, split into east and west units flanking Tucson, protects the densest stands. The plant tops out near 40 feet and can live more than 150 years; arms typically appear after the first 50 to 75. Snow reaches these elevations only when a winter low pressure system pulls cold air south behind a Pacific front, usually at 2,500 feet and up in the Catalina, Rincon, and Tucson Mountain foothills.
Measurable snow in Tucson averages less than an inch a year, and many years record none in the city itself. The foothills above 2,500 feet see flurries a handful of mornings each winter, most often December through February. The events that actually frost the saguaros tend to follow a clearing cold front, with the snow falling overnight and a hard blue sky breaking just after dawn. The melt is fast: surface temperatures climb above freezing within an hour of full sun, and the white is gone by mid-morning.
The window for the photograph is short. Snow holds longest on the north-facing pleats of the saguaro ribs, where the low winter sun does not reach until after nine. The colour palette of a snow-on-saguaros morning is narrow and very particular: a green that reads almost grey under the cold light, a cream-white dust along the upper ribs, the Catalina ridgeline behind in pink alpenglow. Photographers in Tucson watch the National Weather Service freezing-level forecast and drive up Catalina Highway or out to Saguaro West before first light.