When I ran into Neighbor L yesterday morning she said there was a ‘90% chance’ of rain forecast for yesterday. There being not a cloud in the sky visible through all the secondhand smoke I had my doubts. But the day was windy and unsettled and only a moron seriously tries to predict the weather around here, especially during winter and monsoon. So I was surprised but not flabbergasted when, for literally the first time all spring and summer…
…it actually rained! Water fell from the sky before my very eyes.
And not just a sprinkling to settle the dust, either. Look at the drainage ditch! My porch gutter is doing something besides bleaching in the sun!
The serious rain began at about ten minutes to six, so technically it was during the day rather than evening and my stated prediction was false – but I was only going with the safe odds. It’s monsoon and rain has been predicted before. So far only a little thunder and sometimes a brief sprinkle. This is the first real rain since winter. The cattlemen gave up on grazing their herd here early last month, which is one blessing of a drought.
Appears to have rained off and on during the night, too. I’d be interested to hear what the actual rainfall was, except nobody measures that at or near the Gulch. Probably we just finally got lucky and were under one of the small wandering storm cells we normally see watering the horizon.
Today you are praising the rain, but tomorrow you will be damning the mud. 😀
Love that water from the sky! Ours fell in the form of snow. After a warm dry spell, most of the snow melted on the warm ground, but the cool flat surfaces where it didn’t melt got 4-6 inches. Love that water from the sky!
Of course! 🙂
I much prefer it when it’s dry. But everything can be taken to extremes – and around here, when it comes to the weather, everything usually is.
Grab a cheap plastic bucket, one that has straight sides, glue a cheap plastic ruler on inside with zero at bottom of bucket and 12 (yeah, like that will ever happen) pointing up to the sky. Set said bucket outdoors away from roof or trees and forget about it until after a rainstorm. You run out and place it on a level surface and read the rain depth. Log it then dump it out and ready for next round. Been doing this for years. Last night and yesterday we had super rain cells that dumped inch and a half in 5 and ten minute bursts, it was the coming of Noah for a while. Cheap and as accurate as any TV station data, probably better.
Book Suggestion: Tony Hillerman’s books about the Navajo Tribal Police officers Chee and Leaphorn.
It is a fun series, and he throws in the occasional bit of Tribal thought patterns – like a quick rain that dries up is a “Male” rain, and the long, slow soaker is a “Female” rain. I think. Unless I got them backwards.
Just a thought – in case you needed something to read this winter.
That was an actual cold front that came thru yesterday – even caught me a bit by surprise. I hadn’t followed the forecasts closely and expected the front to come thru early today. When I saw the impressive lightning display last night about 20 miles away I just assumed it was a monsoon storm stirred up by the advancing front. Where all that lightning was wound up getting over 4″ of rain – and nickel-sized hail was reported. Less than a hour later we got a milder 36/100th with no hail. Works for me!
There’s a network of smaller weather stations that make their data publicly available – called something like the Civilian Weather Observation Program. One of the places that data can be found is here. It may turn out there’s a station near you.