New Alchemy

Lake Tahoe : Living Jewel

Lake Tahoe sits like a gleaming sapphire jewel on the eastern border of Northern California. It is a high alpine lake of immense size and remarkable clarity. Its pristine waters reflect the sky in remarkable shades of blues, greens and violets and the lake itself can show many moods as the colors of the sky shift with the ever present changes in the weather. The weather over Lake Tahoe is influenced by the fact that the flow off of the ocean to the west over the Central Valley of California provides a regular flow of moisture up the western slopes of the Sierras. The many mountains ringing Lake Tahoe create currents that steer these moisture laden currents into an amazing array of cloud formations throughout any given day.

The picture shows the lake just awakening from the coolness of the evening. When looking east over the Carson range that forms the eastern boundary of the lake, the Sun can be seen glancing off of large banks of stratus clouds sending a rosy glow onto the water. The 10,000 ft. peaks often have some snow on them that keeps cold nighttime currents of air descending down the slopes towards the water. The water in turn is then warmer than the air above it and fog layers condense and often form low sinuous ropes of clouds that snake along above the water before dawn. As the air begins to warm with the approach of the sun the cloud snakes start to rise up and form small puffs of clouds in anticipation of the rising of the water vapor that will take place when the first rays of the Sun warm the surface of the lake.  Freel Peak, the large mountain in the distance, sits to the east of Tahoe just on the edge of the desert. It is the highest peak in the Carson Range and often has a snow cap. The rising Sun is already beginning to form clouds off of the peak that are streaming into the atmosphere.  Lake Tahoe is awakening and the mountains all around will soon participate in the dance of wind and water that creates the shifting microclimate of the Tahoe Basin.