It’s always fun to head out at the tail end of a winter storm and capture photographs of the sunrise with the new snow. This winter has had only a few periods with real winter weather—the most notable was the last 10 days of December. Since then storms and snow have been infrequent.

Of course I was interested in taking advantage of our latest weather event—even though it was fairly weak and delivered only a skiff of snow. A quick check of satellite imagery before sunrise showed that skies were mostly clear and that there was a cap cloud on top of the San Francisco Peaks.

I arrived a bit before sunrise at the Mormon Lake overlook and started taking both photographs and video. The clouds were already dissipating over the peaks resulting in much less of a cap cloud than I hoped.

No matter—it’s always fun to out there before sunrise shooting photos. Here are a few photos from before sunrise and just after as the sun began to illuminate the peaks.

Below is a time-lapse video showing the movement of the clouds over the summits of the San Francisco Peaks.

Time lapse video (50x) of the sunrise over the San Francisco Peaks.

I was also intrigued by the tire tracks left in the snow of the parking area.

Finally—here is a sunrise photo from New Years Day—the last day in which we had significant snow here.