Monsoon - East of Arizona locations.
I was going to PM this to Greg, but it may be helpful to others out there heading to Southern NM or Far West Texas this Monsoon season...
I'm heading out to Chiricahua NP, White Sands (they close the dunes at 10PM
), or maybe even the Bisti Badlands this weekend.
Hi Greg,
Chiricahua ("Cheery Cows") is a great park... but the heart of it, with the tall rock formations, is more than a mile's hike. If you're coming in from the East (i.e., from El Paso... along NM-9 to Animas, then NM-80 to the Portal Road), you'll drive up into the trees. It's a beautiful drive, but it may be tough for lightning photography unless you're in the right place at the right time.
SE Arizona is full of wooded spots. Patagonia Mtns is one of them. So is the area around Bisbee. It opens up quite a bit around Douglas/Agua Prieta. In fact the road from Douglas up to Bisbee has a TON of Octotillo which must be beautiful when they're in bloom.
White Sands seems like an ideal lightning photography location, but convection tends to blow up early over the Sacramento Mtns ("Sacs") to the east and along the spine of the San Andres, between Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences (TorC), to the west. White Sands sits in the bottom of the Tularosa Basin, a narrow valley between these two mountain ranges. Convection usually dies down by sunset. An ideal situation occasionally happens where convection in the high elevation in Northern/Central NM spreads south during the overnight hours. Then you may have a shot.
Here's a tip-- you can stay overnight in the Dunes if you get a backcountry camping permit. I did this once to shoot under the full moon. They didn't check for camping supplies, and I was just off midnight shifts and was happy to roam the park all night behind the locked gates. This is also the only way to catch sunrise at the dunes. Only problem is, you're locked in... but there's a phone to call a ranger by the gates if you need to get out in an emergency.
A
good overlook is just past (east of) the crest of the San Agustin Pass on US-70 east of Las Cruces... great view of all the eastern sky. Just a little downhill from the Pass is
Aguirre Springs, a BLM Rec area. You can drive in quite a ways any time of day, with excellent views of the Organ Mtns to the west and south, and the Tularosa Basin to the east, with "unspoiled" desert along the road. Eventually you'll hit a gate which leads the rest of the way to the campground, and this is locked at night. This is a perfect place to watch the sunrise, especially if there has been overnight convection, or a backdoor cold front in the Winter, as the sun will rise clear over the Tularosa Basin, and light up the Organ Mountains and whatever clouds are hovering around them, or being forced up and over them in easterly flow behind a backdoor front in the Wintertime.
Baylor Canyon Drive is a dirt road that runs from the SE end of Las Cruces (take the University Ave exit off I-25, then head east and keep going, past "A-Mountain" and onward, it eventually turns into Dripping Springs Road, then curves north and parallels the Organ Mountains. Great place for Sunsets backlighting the awesome jagged profile of the Organs. Plus, you may be able to get some lightning shots with the Organs in them from farther back on University Ave, near A-Mountain, looking east towards the Organs.
A few times a year, you'll get the "perfect setup" over the Rio Grande Valley between Las Cruces and El Paso, where you'll end up getting numerous converging outflows from daytime convection in the higher terrain to the West, North, and East colliding right over the Valley at night. The resulting convection can be long-lasting and intense.
Good views can be had from Scenic Overlooks on either side of the Transmountain Road (Loop 375 through the Franklin Mtns) on the northern edge of El Paso. (
East and
West) (
example)
Also check out
Scenic Drive on the southern edge of the Franklins, with a great overlook of downtown El Paso's skyline and the sea of orange lights in Cd. Juarez behind it. There's several overlooks... one in a Park on the west end of the road, another right on the Ridge Line, and others on the east side heading back down. (
example 1) (
2) (
3) (
4)
Lightning photography can be tricky with the intense foreground lightning, as you may be tempted to go with a slower ISO or smaller aperture to gain longer exposures. However, as I learned the hard way, this only works for relatively close-by storms. Distant lightning will appear very dim, or not at all if you go with a small aperture or low ISO, or you'll catch the lightning, but the cloud base will not be lit up... making it look like there's lightning coming out of thin black air. Digital is excellent for this... you can quickly figure out the best compromise exposure, and then you can always delete the "blank" frames if you end up with shorter exposures.
Other good lookout locations in the area include around
UTEP, overlooking I-10 (
example1 and
2) and
behind the Sunland Park Mall in west El Paso (exit 13 off I-10), also overlooking I-10 (
example). A good wide, sweeping view of the Rio Grande Valley and the Franklin Mtns, looking east, can be had from
atop the Mesa west of the Valley, near Santa Teresa, NM. Take Exit 8 on I-10 (Artcraft Rd), head west... you'll go through several interchanges, over the NM state line, then suddenly begin heading uphill with a curve to the left. Pull a U-Turn when you can towards the top (beware it's a divided highway!), and there's bound to be a pull-off where RTV'ers like to mess about in the dunes. (
Example 1) (
2)
Several photos from some of the locations I've mentioned can be found through my
web page.
Good luck, and hope this helps someone out.
-Mike
We are actually under a flash flood watch today. This is the first time I can remember this happening, but so far we have only gotten a trace. Glad to hear that the monsoon has started in the Southwest!
but the fish are biting
