Snow Day 12-8-07

We stayed in Socorro, NM last night. We had seen a weather report forecasting the possibility of snow along our intended route. The forecast was for snow in the late PM today. So we talked about taking the longer southern route down to I-10 or stay on US60 which was shorter. We didn't really want to travel on I-10 because interstates are boring and generally crowded. Also we will be taking I-10 back to Texas when we leave Arizona and I really hate to travel the same road twice. So our decision was made, west on US60.

Along the way we passed the VLA. We had seen several signs for VLA so we were interested in what it was. Finally we arrived. VLA stands for Very Large Array, a radio telescope. There are 3 lines of these antenna radiating from a center point. Each line is seperated by a 120 degree angle.

After an hour or so on the road, I turned on the CB to get a NOAA weather forecast. NOAA was predicting 2" to 4" of snow accumulation in Show Low, which was on our intended path. In Datil, NM we ran into our first snow flurries. We drove through it in about 30 minutes and there was little snow that actually stuck to the surface of the road. After that we drove in several hours of sunshine. Off in the west we could see very dark ominous clouds. In Springerville, AZ we stopped for gas and reviewed our decision. We asked the attendant at the filling station "In which direction was the snow?". Her response was to point in all 4 compass directions and said "That way". We were surrounded by snow flurries. Surmising that NOAA predictions probably tended along the direction of those of the Weather Channel (in other words sensationalistic) we still thought US60 was worth trying.

About 25 miles east of Show Low we started to run into snow. On occasion it was so heavy that visibility was about 1000 feet. But it still wasn't sticking to the road. There was some accumulation along the road and the snow plows were out in force. We made our turn onto route 260 at Show Low and saw a sign that the road was closed. So Plan B was implemented. We headed south thru the mountains down to Phoenix. It was a beautiful winding route with just a little rain.

Once near Phoenix we hit the big own traffic and 8 lane freeways. It took about an hour to get thru and up to Cave Creek. We arrived around 5:30 in the dark, of course. We'll be here a week in a timeshare with Frank's brother and his wife. They have friends here and lots of stuff planned for us to do.