Thunderstorms and RAIN!

The monsoon season is here. Every day we are getting huge dark clouds building up. For the last week we have gotten dumped on with torrential rains. Our neighbors have a rain gauge and measured two inches of rain in one week. That's crazy for Arizona! There's one spot on the side of the Big Road that tends to flood into the road when it gets really bad and it was that way yesterday. Huge puddles mark the low spots of our uneven road. I called our neighbors and asked how much rain we got. They said we got 1.5 inches in 1.5 hours! And one of them was out riding horses with a friend five miles from home when it started.

The first year we lived here, we could practically set our watches by the coming of the rain. Every single day for nearly two months the clouds would roll in and the rain would start around 1:00 in the afternoon. Sometimes it was Noon, sometimes around 1:30, but never far off from that. And it always came from the southwest.

This year, it's coming at random times of the day and night. Sometimes it's at 6:30 pm, sometimes at midnight, sometimes at Noon, sometimes at 4:00, sometimes at 10:00 a.m. It's been crazy.

But every day the clouds build up and the skies turn dark grey on the horizon. They've been surrounding our little patch of earth, swirling around to encircle us on all sides except the north. The clouds seem to be racing up from behind the horizon, stretching their menacing turmoil closer and closer throughout the day until they finally let loose with either torrential rain or fierce thunder and lightening.

Everything is looking so green.  Sunflowers are starting to show their color.  Soon there will be flowers everywhere. 

The rain is wonderful.  I would prefer it to come a little more gently and spread out over many more days than it's been coming.  But it's great.  Even if it's starting to come in the basement again....