I saw this strong wind event unfolding several days ahead of time, and arranged my work schedule so I would have December 1st off from work.  I wasn’t really interested in “chasing” a Santa Ana wind locally.  I was thinking about heading up into the Owens Valley and perhaps even a little farther north of Bishop to chase a “Mono wind” event.  A Mono wind event is associated with very strong east to northeast winds through Mono County and downstream from there towards the Sierra Nevada and Central Valley.  Sometimes spectacular (lenticular) wave clouds develop in these situations.  I yearn to photograph a massive standing lenticular cloud in the lee of the White Mountains, or Inyo Mountains, or anywhere in and around the Owens Valley or Mono County!

Charlie Bustamante elected to join me for the one-day jaunt, and I picked him up in Pacoima before sunrise on the 1st.  The news radio stations were all over the local wind storm damage and consternation some 10-20 miles to our east.  The winds had subsided substantially, though.  There was little reason to mosey on over to Pasadena and to fight morning rush hour traffic, unless we wanted to see a lot of horizontal tree stumps and slow-moving vehicles.  We headed up Highway 14 to the Antelope Valley and beyond.

With the upper low deepening a little and remaining near Needles today, flow aloft on the north and northwest side of the low would continue strong in and around the Owens Valley and the southern Sierra Nevada.  There was enough moisture near the center of the low to cause snow in the Big Bear area, but skies north of the Tehachapis were mostly clear, except for the lenticulars!  The wind through the Antelope Valley and western Mojave Desert was moderate, with gusts perhaps to 40 mph.  Skies to our east looked rather dusty as we chugged northward past Lancaster and Mojave.  The NOAA weather radio forecast for the Owens Valley mentioned wind gusts to 70 mph, and as high as 85 or 90 mph for the Eastern Sierra!  That’s what we wanted!  The Mono wind event seemed to have peaked the night before, when northeast winds on the top of Mammoth Mountain reached at least 150 mph!  (Several peak gusts of 150 mph were recorded there—if Mammoth’s wind instrument was subject to an even higher gust, the measurements were not shared.  Steve Johnson found that gusts of greater than 150 mph here are reported as 150 mph.)  Anyway, we could monitor satellite pics and weather obs on Charlie’s phone to see if it might be worth heading as far north as Bishop and Mono County.

We stopped at Red Rock Canyon (about 30 minutes north of Mojave) for about 30 minutes to stretch and to admire some of the bleak and stark landscapes.  The light was fabulous when I was here near sunset in March of 2010, but it was not fabulous on this morning.  Some messy lenticulars were overhead and to the east, but the sun was behind clouds and the light was poor for photography.

It looks like a little wall cloud was protruding from the base of one of the clouds near Red Rock Canyon.  We didn’t stick around to monitor for rotation.

After a stop at an Olancha convenience store to stock up on junk food, we headed northeast on 190 towards Keeler.  Ah, yes, it was great to be in the Owens Valley and its wide open, empty, desolate spaces, sandwiched between the steep slopes of the Inyo Mountains and Eastern Sierra!  And, something was definitely afoot weatherwise over Owens Lake.  Parts of the lake are covered with water now to help reduce the airborne dust during windstorms, but a large plume of dust was obvious towards our northeast, towards Keeler.  And, a massive low-to-mid-level cloud was hanging right over the “dry” lake.  It wasn’t really going anywhere, so it was a standing wave cloud.  Strong northeasterly winds were barreling down the east slopes of the Inyos, were kicking up dust along the east side of Owens Lake, and were causing this thick, black beast of a cloud to hover right over much of Owens Lake.  The cloud was perhaps more of a SCSL (stratocumulus standing lenticular) rather than an ACSL (altocumulus standing lenticular).

Charlie and I stopped about halfway from Olancha to Keeler to shoot the scenery.  It was quite chilly and the wind was blowing, but wasn’t too bad.  The gusts here were no more than 35 mph.

The view is to the north and NNE in the last two images above.  Below the dark base of the low-level lenticular is the plume of blowing dust.

We motored northeast to the 190/136 junction, and then went a mile or two or three northwest on 136 towards Keeler.  From here, we had a good look at the eastern side of the lenticular cloud, and a long-range view of the dust that was blowing beneath it on its eastern edge, very near Keeler.

We drove a few more miles towards the dust plume, and found a dirt road up an alluvial fan, east of Keeler.  The wind was quite strong here and we had a front row seat to the impressive dust plume and the rather strange cloud that was stationary over the lake, now to our west.  It was unpleasant outside—-in the low 40s with wind gusts over 50 mph with occasional dust.  Charlie and I braved the elements and documented the unusual scene!

The sun was just above the lenticular to our south, so we were bathed in nice bright sunshine.  I measured a gust to 56 mph with the hand-held Kestrel, and decided that was high enough!  Towards the northeast, a low layer of clouds appeared to be snowing on the Inyos…or at least was providing a massive snow virga display.

The next stop was Keeler, and that meant driving into the dust plume!  Keeler is known for its problems with dust and irritating particulates off of the nearby playa, but today the dirt and dust was getting whipped up off of the gentle alluvial fan slopes to the east and northeast.  One nasty dust-filled plume was blasting through a “lakeside” mineral business south of Keeler.  We drove around Keeler a bit to enjoy the wind and dust, and then north a few miles to Swansea.  I resisted rolling down the windows as much as possible…but couldn’t help myself from time to time.  I still have Keeler dust in my ears.

The wind and dust in the face became a tad tiresome, so Charlie and I headed into Lone Pine for lunch and a washroom.  After lunch we headed for more hospitable environs:  the Mount Whitney and Alabama Hills area west of Lone Pine.  A separate Stormbruiser page is devoted to the afternoon edition of December 1, 2011!

Charlie Bustamante and I moseyed on up to the southern Owens Valley for a day of wind and dust and photography.  The late morning hours were spent around Keeler and Owens Lake, and a separate Stormbruiser page was posted for that.  After lunch in Lone Pine, we elected to go into pretty picture-taking mode in and around the Alabama Hills, below Mount Whitney.  It was chilly and occasionally windy here, but not nearly as nasty as the conditions southeast of Lone Pine and around Keeler and Swansea.

The images above were a little west of the sharp switchbacks on the Whitney Portal Road west of Lone Pine, at about 8000 feet elevation.  The temperature here was about 28F, but the wind was light.  Mount Whitney itself was obscured by clouds.  We had driven beyond the official “road closed” sign (below the switchbacks), and came upon this part where plenty of rocks and dirt had descended upon the road.

The Alabama Hills are just west and northwest of Lone Pine.  Some clouds, including the large wave cloud that was over nearby Owens Lake, were shading most of the area; but, occasionally the sun emerged for a brief appearance and lit up our foregrounds.  The face of the eastern Sierra remained quite prominent and presented the usual fantastic photo ops:

From here we poked around the Owens River east of Independence, and came upon an old railroad station called “Kearsarge,” and an abandoned mining operation.

After one last stop to image the Eastern Sierra around sunset, we headed back south towards the real world.  I’m ready to go back already.

These desert images were somewhat of a harbinger of the type of weather that would characterize most of Texas for the rest of the spring and summer during 2011.  The first two are at Desert Center, CA, the second two are on Salt Flat in Hudspeth County, TX, the next two are at Orla, and the final two from the Loving/Reeves county line.

Nevertheless, it is a great basin. The Park Service strongly advises that visitors bring their old, useless Eureka vacuum cleaner to the basin’s main intersection — Death Valley Road and the side road to the dunes — and leave it there. A monument of sorts will be erected here. This will be called Vacuum Junction. Working together, we can make this junction more famous than Teakettle Junction, and create a better reason for the basin’s name.

We entered Eureka Valley via Big Pine on the west side. I was driving my X-terra, and a rear tire went flat on the gravel road in the middle of the basin. Brian and Nancy and I replaced it fairly quickly, and we continued on the side road to the dunes. The place was fairly empty, as usual, but we did see a few vehicles and a handful of folks on the dunes upon arrival. We spent an hour or two on the north and northwest sides of the dunes until sunset.

After sunset we changed outfits and switched from landscape photographers to astrophotographers. We enjoyed the dunes so much that we returned early the next morning. Given the high Last Chance mountains just east of the dunes, the sun doesn’t bathe the dunes until an hour or so after sunrise. I think that sunset at the dunes offers better light for photography compared to sunrise, but it was still nice to get a different “look”. A sandy and bumpy road allowed us to check out the eastern and southeastern sides the dunes.