When the Wind Blows, It Gets Dusty!

This morning, on my way in to town for work, I stopped to take some picture of some Palo Verde trees. This being the time of year when they bloom, they become covered with tiny yellow blossoms. In the early morning light, they are just stunning. But first, I took a couple of shots of a yellow bush, and noticed the little winged guy shown here. So, I thought I'd give the macro mode a whirl. The shot turned out better than I expected.

I know that this has nothing to do with sunrises, but here's the little bee ...



And then I took several shots of the Palo Verde trees. You can see here just why I am so attracted to them in the morning light.



And that gets us to tonight. As I was leaving town, to begin my long trek back home, I realized that we had a lot of wind. The weather reports had been predicting this for the last couple of days. And, wind means at least one thing -- dust!!!

We didn't have a 'dust storm' -- and we here in the desert understand what a dust storm really is -- we just had dust. And dust means interesting sunsets. And that made me hopeful. In the shot below, the sun is just a big hazy bright spot. At this point in time I still didn't know that we had any clouds. Does it look like there are any clouds to you?



In this next shot, as the sun continued on its way down, I realized that there were a few clouds just above the horizon.



I've commented on this before, but as the sun goes lower, it begins to take on its normal appearance as a clearly defined circle again, as opposed to the hazy spot seen above.



Here is a shot that I think I like, with just half of the sun peeking around the cactus. And, with so much dust in the air, the sun is not overwhelmingly bright.



And, finally, the sun is beginning to disappear behind the final bank of clouds.