Amboy desert ‘steam rain’? (#1009)

This and the adjacent ‘steam rain’ pictures are trying to capture the same phenomenon. I converted this version to black and white to hopefully make the phenomenon more visible – it was much clearer to the naked eye than is showing up here.

What’s of interest here is the cloud in the center of the picture that appears to be steam billowing up from the desert floor, just past a row of hills and on the edge of the rain. That first row of hills is over 4 miles away from me, so the visibility of that ‘steam’ cloud indicates is is billowing fairly high up. I’m labeling it ‘steam’ because I can’t think of any other explanation. There is zilch in this landscape of human structure, so it can’t be some human-created dust cloud. The only thing that I can figure is that there may be some hot spring or other geothermal activity out there, and rain is draining into that activity and creating steam. Unfortunately I can find no mention of geothermal activity in the area (Cadiz and Bristol dry lakes).