We had some light rain during the night, but it was not raining by daybreak. We had Christmas dinner with our friends the Straube's at noon and left there about 2pm. We decided we wanted some snow for Christmas, so we headed north toward Payson, AZ, up in the mountains on the Mollogon Rim. It was getting very overcast with heavy dark clouds and as we were getting under way it was raining and we had rain all the way north to Payson. Payson is at 5000' but we did not see any snow. We decided to go on north toward
the town of Pine which was further up in the mountains at 5400'. As we approached Pine, we started seeing some snow on the ground. About the time we went through town we saw a highway truck with a snow plow and salt spreader with lights on, etc. It looked like he had been working on the road further north, so we decided to turn around and head back to Mesa. It rained almost all the way back with a lot of gusty winds.
Our photo is of a garage in Pine all decked out with lights. The whole town was decorated and looked very nice. On our way back south we saw much show on the north slopes where it had been protected and appeared to be 3 to 4 inches deep. It was getting dark and raining and or photo of the snow did not turn out, but it was really there.
As we were returning to the valley, from about 15 miles out and about 2000' we could see the lights of Phoenix and Mesa and on to the east to include Apache Junction which was higher in elevation as it gets into the foothills of the Superstition Mountains. You can really tell that Phoenix and all the way to Apache Junction is in a huge valley with mountains on all sides.