Watching the Weather in the Mojave

Carol Pearson lives in beautiful Ridgecrest, California, in the high Mojave desert, where her Vantage Vue looks at this stunning view.

We asked why Carol got a weather station? And we enjoyed her answer and thought you might too!

"I grew up in Minnesota where we enjoyed a great variety of weather with the seasons and it was an interest my my father had also. Here in the desert at about 2200’ [670 m] elevation we have bountiful sun and often bountiful wind. I guess I was most curious about the wind. The max wind speed I have noted was 52 mph [84 kph] on 5/10/14. It is likely that I have missed higher values due to my west wall deflecting some wind.

My deck is second story and it was convenient for me to do my setup and also be able to easily check on it. High and low temperatures are based on recollections before I had a weather system. The highest temperature was 118.2°F [48°C] in August of 1988 when my home was being built. Lowest occurred just a few years after that when we had consecutive night lows of 5° and 7°F [-15° and -14°C] degrees sometime in the winter. We seem to have our coldest weather in December while it was always January or February back in Minnesota.

My outside weather collector is on the west side of my deck. The highest mountain in the background is Owens Peak at about 8500’ [2600 m] in the southern end of the Sierras. It also has some snow on it that fell overnight while we had sprinkles in town that had not cracked the .01” [0.3 mm] baseline level yet. We have snow here every few years and it usually melts overnight. On one or two occasions it has lasted a couple of days. When it does snow the school district releases students early so they can enjoy it.

I took the sunset picture in October. I have taken many sunset pictures over the years. This was one of the better ones. Some years ago we had a forest fire in the mountains to the west. I took a towering white smoke picture that I sent to our local newspaper and they featured it large scale on their front page (back before digital has become so popular)."