Check out the photos at this news report — hope they stay online for a while, long enough for readers to get an eyeful. More entertainment appears here.
About ten after six this morning the dogs and I rolled out of the sack, late because it was so dark outside. A menacing gray-black mass of clouds filled the western sky, thunder rumbling all around us, and I thought it must be raining in Sun City. Twenty minutes later, le déluge! An amazing quantity of rain fell out of the sky!
The French well scheme I had the guys build on the north side of the patio doesn’t seem to have worked. Or maybe it did: maybe it kept water out of the house. Lake Patio came right up to the back doors.
Fortunately, the house is built on a slab that rises about four inches above grade, so an even more phenomenal amount of water would have to pour down to get into the house.
The sky cleared, and I hit the road to find out if the Leslie’s guy knows anything about pool alarms, by way of managing Ruby’s proclivity for tiptoeing around the edge. He didn’t. Then it was off to the Safeway to get Sergeant’s dog vitamins. They didn’t have them. Neither did Walgreen’s. So to Home Depot to see if I could find someone to discuss the use of their order-your-own fence sections. Not a soul, in the entire lumber and fencing section!
Geez.
By the time I got home, more banks of dark clouds were closing in. Started to rain briskly as I turned into the ’hood, delivering a free car wash before I turned into the garage. All that remained was to dry the car off with some microfiber rags!
Very nice.
Again a deluge fell. The water rose up to the door threshold again, then finally receded. It’s fairly clear in the west now, but dark and threatening to the east.
I felt lucky to get back to the house before it started to really rain hard. Also feel very lucky that I live in the central city and not out in the ’burbs or outlying semi-rural areas, where residents are having to be rescued from their homes.
It’s only 79 out there, so the air-conditioning is off — a whole day without an expensively powered machine trying to hold the interior 30 degrees below the ambient temperature will make for a nice little saving on this month’s electric bill! And I suppose I can turn the watering system off again.
Looks like the excitement is about over, at least for now. And so, to work.
Rain! Hope everyone is safe – it always amazes me that people risk their own safety and their car to try and drive through flooded roads rather than pulling over and waiting it out. Why?!?
Sometimes people take stupid risks. Sometimes they don’t understand the risk or realize the water is as deep as it is or the road has crumbled away underneath. Sometimes they simply enter a low place (some are pretty wide here) and get hit with a wall of water before they can drive all the way through it.
Easterners (that means anyone from east of the Rockies) just don’t get it.
Hey those savings on electricity and the water will be nice 😉
Every little bit helps, that’s for sure!
I heard about your flooding on NPR when I woke up this morning. Wow, you sure are having some major monsoon rains this year! Where does it all go? Does it help put a dent in your drought situation?
When the rains falls this fast and hard, it runs off. Rather little soaks into the water table — what’s needed for that is slow, gentle, steady rain of the sort we used to get late each winter. That no longer happens.
The rain flows down the washes and into the riverbeds, where, if our rivers had not been destroyed, it would flow into the Colorado and thence into the Gulf of Mexico.
I live in the So Cal desert and we got the storm last night. It was lovely, delightful, beyond words to hear the sound of thunder and rain. So rare for us. I wish it had happened in the daytime so I could have had a better visual.
Of course I kept falling back asleep between cracks of thunder. Once the storm was possibly directly over our house and the thunder was so loud and it woke me up so violently I think I levitated about four inches off the bed.
I wish we could have one of those per month.
We used to have them every day. When I moved here in the early 60s, beautiful thunderstorms would roll in about 4 or 5 p.m. We’d have an incredible lightshow after dark, and the storms would be over before midnight. This would happen every summer in July & August.
First we overdeveloped the Valley, creating a heat bubble that deflects the storms around the city. And more recently, we definitely have seen climate change. A monsoon rainstorm happens when temps are around 104, which was pretty typical back then. Over 104, and it doesn’t rain, or rain doesn’t hit the ground. That’s the case almost every day now, all summer long: most summer days are around 110.
We have more rain than I ever expected after moving to Tucson.
Back in southern Nevada the dark clouds would just tease us and not a drop would fall.
On the other paw this monsoon humidity is just dreadful but when it rains the temperature drops 20 degrees.
After 2 months here I sleep thru the ‘Thunder Bolts of Lightning, very very frightening’ stuff.
It does get sticky, that’s for sure.
I’ve always thought the monsoon was nicer in Tucson than in Maricopa County: seems to cool down more sharply, and the mountains make the pyrotechnics even more fun.
Yea, we’re in a valley on the west side kind of in the country but still 15 minutes from downtown.
No one bothers us or the other people that live here.
Still learning Spanish.
Sounds peaceful. I’ve heard the traffic in Tucson has gotten so hectic as to be crazy-making. Used to like Oro Valley but it seems to have built up.
Now…Patagonia. Or better yet: Yarnell!
Ya, they drive 10 mph over any posted speed limit down here and I’m the only one that uses turn signals.
I’m not psychic so I just keep guessing and look for eye contact.
Got to go and practice my Spanish now, take off my chooze and get ready to take a chower.
LOL! That’s why I call them “my fellow homicidal drivers.” Afraid it’s not a joke…
Actually, in many parts of Arizona you can drive 11 mph over the posted limit before they give you a ticket. That’s why everyone is going 10 mph fast.
The exceptions are school zones and construction zones.