After the sheets of rain and the strong gusty winds subside, the aftermath of the big rainfall results in the road in front of our house flowing with whitecaps. I took this video from the garage with the wind and rain still blowing a bit. I panned up to the hill on the northeast of the property where lightning was still striking in the distance. Click on the play button to see the video.
On our way back from the Ford dealer this morning (we had to return the GMC seats for our trade-in) (love the new truck, by the way), Verna took an image of the cloudscape over the mountains in the distance as we crossed the Hassayampa River. The clouds are forming over the Bradshaw and Weaver Mountains twenty plus miles distant, while the underground riverbed dominates the foreground in this image. Click on the image to view the panorama full size.
The Hassayampa River flows underground for most of the year, but when the monsoons come, the water flows big time. This is one of the pylons under the pedestrian bridge in town that clearly shows the high water marks when the big surge comes down the river from the headwaters. When that is going on, it is NOT a good time to be anywhere below the floodplain. Click on Verna’s image to enlarge.
Last evening, we were bringing the dogs back from walking when I noticed the sun rays among the cloud build ups over the house. I call this effect a “glory,” but it does have a technical name, crepuscular rays.
Wikipedia has this about crepuscular rays:
Crepuscular rays (also known as God rays) in atmospheric optics, are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. These rays, which stream through gaps in clouds (particularly stratocumulus) or between other objects, are columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud-shadowed regions. Despite seeming to converge at a point, the rays are in fact near-parallel shafts of sunlight and their apparent convergence is a perspective effect (similar, for example, to the way that parallel railway lines seem to converge at a point in the distance).
The name comes from their frequent occurrences during crepuscular hours (those around dawn and dusk), when the contrasts between light and dark are the most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word “crepusculum”, meaning twilight
This is an image of lower Casandro wash just before it flows into the aqueduct under Mariposa Drive. If it were not for Casandro Dam located 1000 feet upstream, the entire property zone where we built our house would be flooded rather than just this trickle.
The dam’s catch basin stores most of the water flowing down upper Casandro wash when the monsoons come. There is a regulated pipeline that originates in the basin and ends with the pipe that slowly releases the trapped water at a point below the dam.
Just last Friday, Verna and I were down in this part of the wash picking up bottles, cans and other unsightly debris to be recycled rather than be an eyesore to us and anyone else that likes to see our desert clean from debris like that. Click on Verna’s image to enlarge.
One hell of a gully-washer this afternoon. The skies opened up, the thunder and lightning came and after the sheets of rain let up a bit, we went out to see the road flowing like a little river. Click on the image to enlarge.
We had been grilling hamburgers earlier and managed to get our trailer awning retracted and the gear put away before the monsoon showers came. Putting the stuff away in time was a combination of luck and intuition.
