Jan 22

Rain! Holy moly did it rain! Night before last it rained all night long, a steady rain with no wind. Nice rain. Then yesterday morning the wind came with rain right behind it that had more the feel of a fire hose than a rain shower. The events downtown were all closed down by 11 and we were reconciled to a day in Cleo. I put together a big pot of chili and made some cornbread with green chilis to have for dinner.

And it rained.

And it blew.

And then it rained and blew harder. Then we got the NOAA weather warning of a tornado watch about 50 miles up the road.

And then the rain and the wind got even fiercer. At one point poor Cleo was rocking and rolling so much from the wind gusts that I took the pot of chili off the stove and put it in the sink. The wind was forcing water in through the weep holes at the base of the windows on the windward side, so we had great bubbles of water burbling in. I quickly slid open the window and screen on the down wind side and got a picture of the rain blowing horizontally across the desert.

This morning we had broken clouds and the air was washed so clean that the far hills didn’t look like they were hazed with an overlay of blue, but all the colors stood out bright and clear. Someone who had a surviving weather station announced that wind gusts at his rig had topped at 65 and we had 3.1” of rain just yesterday, which added to the 2” the two days before is more than half the annual rainfall for this area. I’d be willing to bet we’ll see flowers popping out soon.

We went to the RV show this morning, and found many of the vendor tents had not survived the storm, but as I was walking along I passed a tall saguaro with a big hold in the side, and snugly nested in there was a little Inca dove. Her house survived the storm just fine.