Amirhan, Part 1 - First snow

Amirhan desert mission, day 324

Something weird is happening.
Not that that should be strange, being where we are. This is the place where the most weird in the world happens, that is why we are here. But this is weird even for Amirhan.
I woke up this morning, and it was cold. It often is cold in the morning, a lot of the heat the desert gathers up in the day is radiated back into the cloudless sky during the nights, but it is never this cold. I could see my own breath in the air. It took me a while to get outside, having to pull on more clothes than usually, but I already noticed something off about the light as I was getting dressed.
It was white outside. The natural color of the Amirhan sands is a mixture of yellow, a bright red some darker brown, blending together and making it a distinctive shade of orange, unlike any color found elsewhere in the world. Now it was all white (that is why the light was somehow off, even inside - after almost a year here, my mind has learned exactly what the light should be like at any time of the day, and the white made the light move and reflect very differently from what I am used to), and I admit it took me a moment to realize it was snow. The desert was covered with it as far as the eye could see. I know what snow is, of course, but I have never seen it myself, being from the northern parts of the world. We never get snow there, and neither should we get it here, no matter how weird this place otherwise is. Despite the snow being there at all gave was a sign something was very off, I was fascinated by it. How could I not be, seeing something for the first time that had only been an abstract thing in my mind before this.
From what I have read (which isn't much, since I never thought I would come into contact with snow), the amount that had fallen during the night wasn't much. There was only a ten centimeter layer of it on the ground, just enough to reach my ankles. I picked it up, tried to weigh it in my hand, get a feel of what we were dealing with. It was very cold, and turned back into water in my hand.
For a moment I only stared at my hand, unable to understand how I could have forgotten. It was because I was facing something new, and my mind was busy processing the wonder of it. But my wet hand had reminded me of what was the most important thing right now.
If the temperature is cold enough to freeze water into snow, it is also cold enough to freeze a plant, and I did not know what would have happened to our mata'ir. It truly is an incredible plant, and a literal life saver if you plan to live in a desert. It doesn't look like much, it only seems to have a few huge leaves that grow forever along the ground, but beneath the surface is where its real value is hidden. Its trunk, meters long and over one wide is hidden under the sand, and is capable of sucking in water from incredible distances and depths. It is where we have gotten our water during our year in the desert. It is not purely fresh water, it comes from a plant, after all, but it is closer to water than sap and works perfectly well for drinking. Those plants are the only hope for a person lost in the desert. (Though I'm not sure a person lost in this desert would have hope Then again, weirder things have happened here than people stumbling out of the desert with their last strength.) My hope was its massive size had stopped it from freezing over. Being underground would also even the temperature changes, so it could easily be warm enough there to keep it from freezing and dying. But even though I have read the theory a long time ago, doesn't mean I know how to deal with cold temperatures, or that am able to convert that long ago learned theory into practice, no matter how good I am, or that I even remember the theory right to begin with. It has been long years, and I have had a lot of things I thought more important to remember.
I was able to get liquid water out of the mata'ir no problem. So its massive trunk had been massive enough to not freeze. For now. We don't know how long this cold would go on, since we don't know where it had come from or how, or anything else. Though it means we also don't know if the cold reaches underground at all.
We spent the day checking on our field experiment areas and spots, to see if they were still functioning despite the cold. Only one of them was down, but that one we had assessed already a week ago to probably give in soon. Everything we checked all day seemed normal (as normal as anything ever is here) aside from the temperature and the snow cover.
All in all, we know nothing and understand nothing about this phenomenon. This is a weird place, but I had finally started grasping some kind of logic, a certain type of weirdness that is typical to Amirhan. This is completely inconsistent with all of that. I am not sure if I have only been imagining finding the logic, the sense where there is none, the human mind is very good at finding patterns where there aren't any, after all, or if there is something more going on here. Either way, I have a bad feeling about this, and that is not a thing I say lightly.
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Oh, a topic for tomorrow, I almost forgot!
Your topic is Mice.

~matu