HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

Wet enough for ya?

@Jim_H
I had 2.6 inches at my house overnight. That makes 4.55 inches since Wednesday!

I rode out the eye of the storm in the valley's island of (almost completely) dry.

In most of NJ and NY, it was the second or third wettest July on record. What seemed most unusual to me was that the storms tended highly toward brief and intense.

Good amount of rain here in Cave Creek in the last hour or so. New River Mesa received over 2.6" with close to 1/2 inch in 10 minutes. Yowsah!
Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen...just the way I like it.

@big_load
Hope not too much flooding in your area today.

@azbackpackr

I haven't seen much locally, but I expect a few low-lying urban areas near the coast will have a few days of trouble - the places that always flood in a big rain. Parts of NJ got up to 9" yesterday with some more expected today.

I walked the neighborhood in the rain yesterday and all the little drainages coming off the mountain and all the streets were running heavy. The lake filled enough for water to enter the overflow spillway, but that's no big deal.

The most important thing for us is that we didn't have any wind to speak of. Otherwise there would have been a lot of trees down in the softened ground and endless power outages.

@big_load
Sounds like you dodged a bullet, and I read that the storm is more or less on its way northeast.

chumley wrote: ↑Aug 03 2021 3:08 pmjust in case there's a silent lurker out there

There was a surprising response last time. Here's the report from the next one.
https://www.weather.gov/psr/StormReport ... August2021

@big_load
Ya my sisters who live in PA - inland and my best bud who lives in CT said basically much about nothing.....yes some localized rain is specific areas but all in all not bad....

With the first day of autumn just 7 days away, it's beginning to look like the monsoon will try to give the Arizona deserts one last gasp of storm activity with an assist from Nora. If any of this comes together, a few more rainfall records may be broken.

KwaiChang wrote: ↑Aug 25 2021 5:57 pm @big_load
Ya my sisters who live in PA - inland and my best bud who lives in CT said basically much about nothing.....yes some localized rain is specific areas but all in all not bad....

Ultimately the biggest problem for me is that a wet July and August means I'll have to mow the lawn more often for the rest of the year. Also, since it's an acorn year, there will be some shrapnel.

I have to say, I was astonished at how green it was coming into Flagstaff from the east and down into Phoenix. I could hardly believe what I was seeing after being gone since Aug 1 . And then when I got closer to Phoenix, I definitely thot I was dreaming as I saw an explosion of.... POPPIES. Wow!

I had my neighbor turn off my irrigation after the last storm, thank goodness. My yard is almost garden-like now... at the end of August for gosh sakes.

And you can't blame me for bringing the heat as it was pretty nippy the last week I was in northcentral Montana. Altho there were a couple days (Aug 15-16) when it was hotter in Great Falls than Phoenix.

Anyway, did you miss me ?

@tibber

@tibber
So we were also pretty amazed by all the poppies and could not remember ever seeing poppies in the summer, or this late in the year, from some pretty light research we found a reference to these flowers maybe being called, "Arizona Poppies," which may be a slight misnomer as they are actually closer to a weed. Curious your thoughts on that? Are they the same poppies we see in the spring? Or have you heard of them ever being called Arizona poppies?

here ya go: @friendofThundergod

https://www.desertusa.com/flowers/az-poppy.html
The Arizona poppy is common to profuse in flat, sandy grasslands from sea level to 6000 feet. A summer bloomer, Arizona poppies begin to appear with the rains and in particularly wet years, their display rivals spring wildflowers. Even if Kallstroemia dominates an area one year, it may be rare or nonexistent the next.

There is further info in the link.

friendofThundergod wrote:they are actually closer to a weed

Since a weed is pretty much any plant that grows somewhere we don't want it to, all wildflowers can be considered weeds. Or not.

@friendofThundergod
There are two different species that will grow here, and are actually from different genera. The Mexican poppies are the spring bloomers and tend to occur mostly sub 3000', the Arizona poppies bloom late spring or into summer depending on moisture and tend to be in the middle desert. And yes, basically all of our wildflowers could be considered weeds depending on your definition.

@chumley

chumley wrote:Since a weed is pretty much any plant that grows somewhere we don't want it to

That pretty much describes palo verdes.

Alston_Neal wrote: ↑Aug 27 2021 10:39 am @chumley

chumley wrote:Since a weed is pretty much any plant that grows somewhere we don't want it to

That pretty much describes palo verdes.

I would love to have Palo Verdes in my yard. It would really cement my position as the strangest person on the block.