Then it cloluded over again, with intermittent light snow for the next hour or so. By 2:20, I was tired from skiing in the heavy wet snow, and becoming concerned about the possibility of lightning. The sky had been darkening for a while, and the ordinary snow had changed over to snow pellets (graupel), a sure sign that the precipitation was convective. I decided to head for the lodge to take a break, or perhaps call it a day. About halfway down, though, I saw a flash of lightning, followed a few seconds later by a fairly loud roll of thunder. So the lightning was somewhere a little under a mile away. I got to the bottom as quickly as I could, and found the relative shelter of a small booth by one of the lodges that is used for ski race signups, etc. From there, I got my phone out in hope of catching some thundersnow on video. It did not take long! Soon there was another flash of lightning, brighter than the first one, and then almost immediately - less than a second later - a loud crash of thunder. This lightning was likely no farther away than 1/8 of a mile. In the video, I say "less than a quarter mile" but actually it was quite a bit less. Here is the video:
The storm then moved on as quickly as it arribved, and I decided to call it a day. The lifts were closed for 10 or 15 minutes because of the lightning, then reopened. But I was ready to call it a day. Per radar on my phone, another cell a litle later produced even more in the way of thundersnow to the west of the ski area in the Valles Caldera area - don't know whether any of that made it to the ski area or not, as I had left by then. But it certainly was an interesting weather day in the Jemez Mountains!