No animals were harmed in the making of this mink stole

A lenticular cloud hovers over Mt. San Jacinto, overlooking Palm Springs, California, trapping a smaller cloud beneath it.

You might think we desert dwellers don't like clouds. After all, we've gone to some trouble to live in a place where it only rains a handful of times a year, enduring 100-degree-plus weather for months on end every summer, not to mention the occasional wind storm, haboob, or flood, just so that we can enjoy at least eight months a year of absolutely perfect weather. So we must love blue skies more than most, right? Not quite. We do love our cloudless skies, but the truth is that when a cloud or two does show up, we celebrate.

Today, for example, this lovely lenticular cloud has shrouded the very top of Mt. San Jacinto, our very own Alp, all day long. And all day long I've been reminded of what my fellow desert lover Dinah Shore is said to have said about clouds like these: "Today the mountain is wearing her mink stole."

With two palm trees in the foreground, a lenticular cloud hovers over Mt. San Jacinto in Palm Springs, California

Ms. Shore, not only a legendary singer but a powerful advocate for women's equality in sports, once enjoyed looking out at that cloud-draped mountain from one of the most iconic homes in the desert, designed by one of the creators of Mid-Century Modern architecture, Donald Wexler himself. And if that's not enough name-dropping for you, let's fast-forward to the 21st Century, where the same view is now enjoyed by the house's current owner, actor Leonardo DiCaprio. He doesn't live there full time, though, and when he's enjoying one of his other pieds-a-terre around the world, the place can be rented for a mere $3,750 per night (and up, plus housekeeping.) If we ever win the lottery, you might find us there, especially if we win it during the off-season.

When I started visiting the Palm Springs area back in the 1980s, Dinah Shore was literally a fixture on the drive out from LA: she was on a giant billboard, swinging a golf club promoting the golf tournament to which she lent her name and more.

Back then, likely as not her friend Frank Sinatra was also looking up at the mountain with its misty stole, from his compound in Rancho Mirage: not only did Sinatra love the desert, he loved staying at home when he had the chance (who wouldn't if they lived there?).

Here are Shore and Sinatra enjoying a spot of "Tea for Two" (and much more) on TV in 1958:


Every spring in Palm Springs, Dinah Shore is honored by the world's largest gathering of women, a giant party known as "The Dinah." Meanwhile, the women's golf tournament that once bore her name also continues, now known as the ANA Inspiration. The winner of that tournament gets a prize awarded to no other golfer: the chance to jump into a pond and then don a special bathrobe in which to receive her trophy. Come to think of it, that champion's bathrobe looks kind of like a mink if you use your imagination, and it's a lot more valuable.

And of course, both Shore and Sinatra have been immortalized in Palm-Springs-area street names: Frank Sinatra Drive was once known as "Wonder Palms Road" and Dinah Shore Drive is also known as the "Mid-Valley Parkway." Both intersect with Gerald Ford Drive and Bob Hope Drive, but not with Ginger Rogers Road.