This picture was taken late in the lifecycle of this snow shower, which passed just north of the ski area. At this time, the cloud above the snow shower had largely eroded - not unlike the collapsoing stage that occurs at the end of thunderstorms.
As I drove back to Santa Fe after skiing, I noticed that some heavier convection was beginning to occur to the east, along the west slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This picture taken through my car window was the best I could do, but it is enough to give you the idea:
This fairly rapidly moved up and over the mountains near the Santa Fe Ski Area, and probably produced some minor accumulations of graupel and/or snow. But it was too fast-moving and brief to produce much.
The next day, March 8, was a different story, though. By around 10:30 a.m., it was evident on radar that intense convective snow showers had gone up over all the mountain ranges of northern New Mexico (Sangre de Cristo, Tusas, Jemez, Sandia, and Manzano). I was busy so did not immediately head out to take pictures, but around noon I was able to get away for a while, to a couople high spots northwest of Santa Fe. An interesting feature of this storm is that while the towering storm clouds were producing intense snow in both the Jemez Mountains to the west and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east, much of the Rio Grande Valley in between had relatively clear skies. Not unlike what happens sometimes in the summer with monsoon storms. The two pictures below show the intensive convective snowstorm over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near the Santa Fe Ski Area:
And as you can see from this picture, although it is farther away from my vewing location, a slimiar process is going on to the west in the Jemez Mountains:
These storms continued over the mountains through the day without moving a great deal. During the course of the day, Ski Santa Fe received a foot of snow, a rate that exceeded an inch per hour. Overnight the snow continued, with the heaviest snow shifting west into the Jemez Mountains and lighter snow filling in somewhat over the Rio Grande Valey. All New Mexico ski areas received 7 inches or more of snow, with the heaviest total storm accumulations at Ski Santa Fe (15 inches} and at Pajarito, in the Jemez Mountains (14 inches).
With convective snowstorms this intense, particularly at this time of year, you might expect that there would be thundersnow, and in some areas that did occur. Not in either of the immediate cells I photographed, but in other ones including far southern Colorado, the Jemez Mountains north of Los Alamos, around Taos and the Sipapu Ski Area in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the Manzano Mountains southeast of Albuquerque, it did. Yet with all this intense activity over the mountains, most locations in the Rio Grande Valley received only minor dustings of snow.