HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

This is gross.

@chumley

Wow! That's pretty bad.

@chumley
Broke 80 at the house this morning, nice storm from about 4:15 to when I left for Badger springs at 5:15. Enough to harvest a good, nearly full bucket of water for the tree. Rained all the way to Badger Springs, sprinkled on hike and rain most of the drive home. 68 degrees at Badger when we started hiking. Modest little flash of the Agua Fria where it crosses under the 17.

Edit: Sunset point recorded a half an inch, that might
go up some too.

@FOTG
Yeah, pretty widespread rain in the overnight hours across the whole valley. A few gauges with over 1". Almost all of them with something. My house remains in the second summer of less than .25" ... two-year total.

@chumley

My house remains in the second summer of less than .25" ... two-year total

Ya that sucks, you might seriously have to think about a sacrifice.

@FOTG
Nice faux cacti. Very water wise.

@Alston_Neal
lol the backyard is pretty bare, but I planted a mesquite out front a few years ago and the city of Phoenix is planting two trees for me this October in the front yard, because apparently I live in a ghetto. lol I just worry about service lines etc, so I have refrained from planting anything in the backyard, although, I am sure a cactus would be fine.

I am having some new gutters put in soon and I’d like to go with two rains catchments, I put this newly acquired bucket out late today, but racked up 24 inches of water at 57.5 inches of diameter. Would be nice to be able to water all three trees without city water one day, but we will see.

FOTG wrote:backyard is pretty bare

After losing three of the original five fruit trees in our backyard it was pretty bare for a while but (mostly Tracey's) efforts have paid off: A quick inventory of the main items now include:
- Two old & three new orange trees
- A new lemon tree
- 6' x 3' raised-bed grow-box (mainly for leafing plants, chard, romaine, etc) with a shelf to hold tomato plants and a vertical mesh for them to climb
- 10' x 2' raised-bed grow-box (yields a large strawberry crop)
- Four milkweed plants (butterflies love them)
- A bird-of-paradise
- 10' strip of lilies (grown from bulbs harvested from the lilies near the old Bushnell Tanks homestead)
- A 6' x 30' garden (empty at-this-moment)
- Plus a whole assortment of plants Tracey would have to remind me the names

FOTG wrote:I am having some new gutters put in soon and I’d like to go with two rains catchments

We had no need for gutters on the front as the runoff drops directly into the flower beds, but we added gutters on the back of the house early this year and installed a rainwater barrel on each end to save and/or direct rainwater to the two old orange trees. I didn't think about it at the time but it's good we got enclosed barrels with a screen to filter the water somewhat, as I find plenty of bird droppings in the screen from one of the gutters... I guess the birds only poop on one end of the house?

@CannondaleKid
I don’t want to thread drift too much on the iconic atmospheric comparison forum, but looks like you went with the 79 dollar barrel that can be bought at Home Depot?

I will go with at least one barrel in backyard and one in front. The Phoenix tree program offered 30 different trees to choose from, but no citrus trees and nothing with nuts. I am going to have an ironwood and red push pistache planted.

As soon as I get the front yard squared away and some shade on that hottest part of the house, I’ll talk to the experts about safe tree options for backyard.

FOTG wrote:I don’t want to thread drift too much

Agreed...

FOTG wrote:looks like you went with the 79 dollar barrel that can be bought at Home Depot?

I don't recall everything but I think the main reasons why I stayed away from the low end ones at Home Depot was the poor reviews and the cheap-looking plastic spout, so I was leaning toward the $150 "Good Ideas" brand 50 gallon which were free to "ship to store". Not wanting to wait a few days and drive to the store I got it for a few bucks less next-day from Amazon.

How to get some rain-- make sure you water your potted plants outside because you are sure it is not going to rain that much. I now have two small lakes in my side yard, my back patio partially flooded and the street in front of the house is a river running into the wash.

Next method for rain, it's trash day and you have to get that one bush pruned. It's morning for chris sake and it's raining, so just put the phone inside get the pruning done, break for some nearby lightning, then finish up.
Two hours later and raining steadily. More like a winter storm pattern; weird.

I swear that the way that monsoon storms have propagated through the valley in the past few years is totally different from my recollection of their previous life cycles. Storms popping up over the Estrella or the low desert west of I-10 and moving northeast, blowing up across the east valley? I can't say I've ever seen that happen before.

@chumley
Our hopes were high. No way could it move without hitting us. We could smell it. Not a drop, I guess were what you call..deleted.

I'm around Cave Creek/Deer Valley and I thought we were going to get so much!
Got a bunch of sand. Yay.

From Tuesday no it’s not snow!

¡¡ Nerd Alert !!
Three-month day-by-day time lapse of all the weather across the planet.



It's pretty fascinating to pick a spot and just watch what happens (the Andes seem to get constantly pummeled by Pacific moisture, for example).

If you click through to the main Eumetsat page, there are a few others, including a very interesting narrated version from all of 2023.

Did the Mexican Monsoon die early, or is it just taking a break? At least from my memory, most years that dried out early like this, were pretty much dry and completely over by Labor Day. Maybe a tropical system? Who knows?

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/p168i12.gif model looks dry, save for West Texas and extreme SE New Mexico, and also a lot of Oklahoma, which doesn't really strike me as monsoonal activity this time of year.

At leas the Ritas got a lot of rain this summer, with most of the higher terrain receiving over 10 inches of rain since late June.

Jim_H wrote:Did the Mexican Monsoon die early, or is it just taking a break?

Hopefully it is done for the year. Went out for a walk with my dog yesterday and it was 71 degrees and not that humid. Walking across the big washes and drainages in my neighborhood it dipped into the 60's. Felt glorious.

Yes, the mornings are starting to cool off, in the upper 60's here now, and it looks like a dry and heating up period coming. Still forecasted a few storms along the border this weekend.