Stormy Desert Sky
Storm looms over the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains foothills in Nambe, New Mexico. The Sangre de Cristos are fault block mountains with major fault lines running along both the east and west sides of the mountains and in places cutting right through them. The mountains were pushed up about 27 million years ago pretty much as one big chunk of rock. On the west side is the San Luis Valley with the Rio Grande Rift Zone running down the middle. On the southeast side is the Raton Basin with a quiet but still active volcano field. On the northeast side are the Wet Mountains and the Front Range areas of pre-Cambrian rock raised up during the Colorado Orogeny some 1 7 billion years ago. The Blanca Massif is also pre-Cambrian rock while the main body of the Sangres themselves is composed of Permian Pennsylvanian rock a mix of igneous intrusions conglomerates and shale that is only about 250 million years old.
Size: 6000px × 4500px
Location: New Mexico, USA
Photo credit: © Katharine Andriotis / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: basin, blue, brush, cambrian, cristo, de, deep, desert, field, foothills, high, hills, hilly, landscape, luis, mexico, mountains, nambe, pennsylvanian, permian, precambrian, pueblo, raton, rock, rolling, sagebrush, san, sand, sandy, sangre, shale, sky, southwest, storm, stormy, touring, travel, usa, valley, volcano, west, western, wet
