Well, it’s here – our rainy season, when we’ll probably get our three to six inches of rain for the entire year. These rare grey days really emphasize to us how lucky we are with abundant sunshine almost every day of the year. The surrounding mountains whose views we so enjoy are today shrouded in a silvery mist, which is also beautiful, hauntingly so.

It’s most likely that when the skies clear again, we will see a new blanket of snow on the mountains at  higher elevations. This spectacular view will be juxtaposed against palms and pools being enjoyed here on the desert floor.

Right now it’s fifty eight degrees which is, believe it or not, rather cold for us. What’s the temperature where you are today?

TV weather coverage of the colder states seems as if they are showing us another planet. Today and all this coming week, the highs in Palm Springs will be in the low seventies. What does this mean? Oh, people can still walk around in their shorts and tee shirts, play tennis, catch a few rays, ride a bike, or even work in a rose garden. This photo was taken late this afternoon, just after I cut these roses. Look at the size of them! They seem to like our weather as much as we do. The more intense colors of these normally delicately colored blooms is a result of cooler nights, paired with our warm days. Wish you were here?

Earlier this afternoon, I drove up Racquet Club Drive to photograph the distant mountains capped with snow. It seemed odd that, as I was looking at the snow, a pickup truck drove up behind me and a pool guy dressed in shorts and tee shirt got out and retrieved his skimmer pole to go tend his clients’ pool. Here we are on the desert floor with everything in bloom, palm trees all about us, temperatures in the high sixties, and I’m looking at new fallen snow in the mountains that surround Palm Springs.

Yesterday, it was foggy here and a soft rain fell most of the day. The mountain tops were obscured by the rain clouds. Our home sits at just 400 feet above sea level, so here we experienced the rain. At higher elevations, that is to say, around maybe 4000 feet and up, the precipitation fell as snow. Today is once again beautifully clear and sunny, being more true to our reputation of “always sunny Palm Springs”.

 

Palm Springs is located in the Coachella Valley and is a part of the Sonora Desert. Thus being in the desert, we can proudly boast to having well over 300 days of sunshine annually, and only about 5 inches of rain each year, yes that’s right – 5 inches! Our weather is incredible from October through May and many current residents moved to Palm Springs shortly after visiting here in the “winter”(which we call “the season”) and falling in love with our weather. The average temperatures for this month – February, are a daytime high of 72-75 degrees, and an evening low of 43-45 degrees. How does that compare to the weather where you live today?

A bit cooler weather is here for a few days now and we are having brief spells of light mist, which means that, above us rain is falling at the intermediate altitudes, and snow is falling at the higher elevations. This phenomenon is glorious to watch. Most of the time the mountain ridges trap the clouds and we receive no precipitation.  But when we hear a forecast of rain on the other side of the mountains, we will occasionally see those big fat clouds seemingly straining to cross over the uppermost ridges of the mountains toward our valley, and we even sometimes see  grey/blue clouds of rain or snow in the upper valleys!

Late yesterday afternoon, there were views so lovely that I rushed home for my camera to record the sight of silvery clouds hovering along the ridges of the mountain tops and in the low lying valleys in the mountains. Later in the evening, the sky above was accented by rose colored clouds, in this shot below, taken from our back courtyard.

A change in the weather is always somewhat exciting to see, as we do consistently have so much sunshine. I always think of the Steve Martin movie, LA Story, in which he plays a weatherman who approaches his daily California weather forecast board, arms laden with sun magnets for the weather board. Yes, the weather outlook is sun, sun, sun and more sun.  And we do love our sunshine!

“Are you ready for cold weather?” and  “What to do before snow” — These are two headlines on my AOL news feed yesterday afternoon.

We have an easy answer – move to Palm Springs! Here we enjoy well over 300 days of sunshine annually. Right now the temperatures are just fabulous with daytime averages in the low eighties and nighttime ones in the low-sixties. To me it does look rather strange to see newscasters and others on TV wearing turtlenecks, wool suits, velvets, winter coats and parkas, while here people are still comfortable in sandals and shorts.

When we moved here, we gave away our winter tires, chains, window scrapers, and those “Yak Tracs” which gave traction to all our shoes. One of our friends in the home loan business told us that when he moved to Palm Springs from the East Coast, he got rid of about 100 business suits. Now he mostly conducts business in Aloha shirts and flip flops year round.

So, if you are tired of grey skies, cold winds and snow, we invite you to visit Palm Springs . . . experience the superb weather, and stay a while.