April Winds bring May…….SNOW!

 

New Mexico has always been a little different.

We don’t get April Showers. It might not rain for many months and we can expect to see sunshine and blue skies about 350 days per year. But in return we also get less than 10” of precipitation for an entire year.

Compare that to the 80+ inches of rain and less than 130 sunny days that much of western Washington and Oregon receive per year.

But unlike the PNW, our rainfall doesn’t arrive until our Monsoon season in July and August. And we can get snow all the way into late May. So, we don’t see many flowers or much green grass here in the mountains above 7,000 ft elevation until late May, early June, although some of our trees are starting to leaf out now.

Which is why I have to wait to plant anything in my raised bed garden. Average Last Frost here is after May 26.

But with the low humidity, we also don’t have slug, mosquito or bug problems and flies don’t typically arrive until July and August and only stick around for a few weeks.

My apple trees did their bloomin’ over the last two weeks, but they’re done now, thankfully.

But our peach tree hasn’t even started, which could be good or bad, depending upon this recent change in weather. Don’t want them to bloom and then have an extreme drop in temperature freeze their ‘bloomers’ off before the bees have a chance to pollinate them.  (woohoo, sounds kind of exciting, doesn’t it?)

Nope, here in New Mexico, especially in the mountains, April brings us wind instead, followed by……May Snow.

Our chickens don’t seem too happy to see the snow.

I noticed that our neighbor is even grazing some cattle on his several hundred acres of land, although we’ve not had much grass growth since last August. I do like seeing the cows over there from my bedroom windows. Sometimes I can even hear them mooing. This is the same land that my neighbor friend Val and I have leased to graze our horses on and to ride. 

Yesterday it was over 70 degrees with sunshine and gorgeous blue skies. I wore a short-sleeve shirt all day. And when we were down in Albuquerque, just 2,000 ft lower in elevation than our house here in the mountains, we even turned on the A/C.

We’ve had a mild winter and hadn't had any snow since early February, so I kinda thought we were done with winter.....

I think our chickens did, too!

But last night the temps dropped down into the low 30's and we woke up this morning to snow...and it's still falling and blowing. And we’re supposed get down into the teens tonight. Brr!

Winter's last hurrah??

Sure hope so!