A winter storm hit the desert a couple weeks ago, dropping
enough snow that some roads in Joshua Tree National Park were
closed for a day or so. The resulting picturesque photos of
snow-laden Joshua trees, like the one here, prompted a bit of
discussion in my circles about the seeming incongruity of
snowfall in a desert landscape. But snow isn't actually all that
rare a thing in California's deserts, at least in the Mojave and
northward. Snow is likely to cap a mountain or two in the desert
each winter -- though the individual mountains may vary. And
though it doesn't happen all the time, even the valley floors in
the Mojave can suddenly look more like the North Pole than the
burning desert. Part of what drives the impression of
incongruity is the popular assumption that deserts are hot
places. Some of them are, to be sure, including the Mojave in
summer: the US's record hot temperature of 134°F was set 99
years ago in Furnace Creek, Death Valley. But deserts are
defined by dryness, not temperature. (Antarcti