In April on the Palouse, you might look south and see a staggering sunny day, then turn around north to dark, threatening skies. The winter wheat by this time is vivid and green, but the fields still awaiting garbanzos and lentils remain in cake-brown furrows. You can still smell winter when the clouds pass over you and the wind hits your chest, but when they float past, the sun makes you sweat and pull off your jacket.
weather
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Marine, Gustave Courbet, 1866. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sun dog.
Hailstorm, Walla Walla, Washington, late June 2012.
Mullein on a clear Winter day.
Eastbound BNSF stack train races out of Spokane in the failing late December light.
Marshall, Washington.
Tattered flag, approaching storm, Walla Walla County, WA.
Union Pacific coal train, Cozad, Nebraska.
Tractor at rest at Rheingans Farms during unseasonable weather in July, Latah County, Idaho.
Tall grass.
Western end of an eastbound thunderstorm, Latah County, Idaho.
Storms are taller than mountains.
Closeup of snow-covered field.
Cumulus clouds like that mean Winter has given up the ghost on the Palouse.