We did get a little rain this evening (it’s 9:39PM now), but there was a small rainbow this afternoon when the sun shone through the cloud cover.
we’re having a gentle winter so far in January. Maybe a couple nights when the temperature got close to freezing, but no problems with anything that may be affected by the cold.
Image above: Rainbow to the east of us — Click on the image to enlarge.
Today marks the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. It is also the shortest day for us with only nine hours and fifty-six minutes of daylight.
In Wickenburg, we’re enjoying a nice sunny day and expecting a high temperature today in the mid-70s Fahrenheit. It is also The Sabbath, God’s Day of Rest. We will be preparing our feast of “Gumbolaya,” which is a combination of Gumbo and Jambalaya, two very favorite Southern (Cajun) stews. If we add okra to the Jambalaya, it becomes Gumbolaya.
Tomorrow, for Sunday Dinner, we will be having Crockpot Roast Top Round of Beef. Check the Food Blog for photos of the eats.
Image above: Waning Gibbous Moon over the big Saguaro Cactus in front of the Garage.
Here we are in the middle of November and the little Rosemary shrubs behind the RV drive (which goes around the house) are getting their little blue flowers. In this image (click to enlarge), the dew drops gather at the bottom of the petals to form little prisms/lenses.
The “dew drops” may actually be residual water droplets from the irrigation system that runs for ½ hour at 4AM to water the landscape flora.
We never have to shop for rosemary in the supermarket, since it is abundant and available year-round on our shrubs all around the rear of the house. Just look at the beautiful sprig in the photo. Image is from Bob’s Samsung S23 Phone Camera.
We’re still in “second spring” with day temperatures still in the high 70’s to low 80’s, but that will soon give way to our usual winter weather over the next few weeks.
What we anticipated to be a dismal forecast for the weather on Eclipse Day, turned out to be not so bad, especially during the totality phase. Clouds passed between us and the sun often, but then opened up for partial phase glimpses and during totality, most of the four minutes of darkness, we were able to see the corona and in the image below, a couple of prominences at two-thirty and five-thirty on the disc. The 5:30 prominence was huge.
I wasn’t very well-prepared to take photos given the woeful forecast, which affected my motivation, but I was able to attach the big 100-400mm telephoto lens and shoot bunches of photos hand-held (no tripod) and had a few fair results including the one above. Verna had similar results and captured the “Diamond Ring” at the end of the totality show:
As I’m blogging this, we are getting some moderate to heavy thundershowers with lightning and thunder, but, Praise the Lord, no tornadoes. The precipitation knocked out the satellite TV a few times, but it is up and running now.
We’re here until Wednesday and then off to other parts of Texas south of us towards the Gulf of Mexico and thence via westerly routes heading back to Arizona over the next several days.
We took the dogs to the groomer today and while we were waiting for them to be finished, we took a little drive up through Constellation Park to the county line between Maricopa and Yavapai Counties. The weather was scattered clouds and a couple of rain showers although we stayed dry.
Verna took this photo of Vulture Peak off in the distance from the county line looking west-south-west toward the vulture mountains. This mountain is an icon when visiting Wickenburg and is very prominently seen from all over town and when approaching the Hassayampa Valley.
Click on the image to enlarge.
Image cropped from GOES. Click to enlarge.
Much of the country received a “polar vortex” event, which caused temperatures to drop dramatically. Our version of the event was probably much milder than a lot of places north and east of here; we only had temperatures drop below 32° for a couple of nights the lows reaching maybe 29-31°. We got no ill effects from the cold save for some damage to the leaves (and not the fruit) on our little lemon tree.
Now, the temperatures are looking more like our normal Sonoran desert conditions for January with lows in the 40s and highs in the 70s. We like it.
The almost cloudless image above was taken from the GOES satellite imagery a couple of days ago. Our location is on the top of Maricopa county just to the left and below image center. In the image within Arizona you can see white areas of snow along the Mogollon Rim and in higher areas in Northern Arizona.
