Ode to a raindrop

[joebartels]

YEE eS!

[desertgirl]

:GB:

Rain is cool ....more rain is even cooler!

[Marc LaBelle]

Oh, I think I will be burning a sick, I mean, vacation day tomorrow, and go exploring.

[montezumawell]

It's 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. Gettin' "gloamy." And, yes, the rain drops are beating down with a regularity we haven't heard upon our roof in many moons.

Our windsock is hangin' straight down. No wind is tossing it to and fro. The rain hasn't, so far, been of an intensity to beat leaves off of the trees over yonder in the Beaver Creek riparian zone.

It is a perfect "Female Rain." Mostly quiet, very gentle. Persistent. Kind. Soft. Gentle. Very giving. Most beneficient. A welcome sight for sore eyes. Beautiful.

A most wonderful moment of wonderment. It is as if the clouds are reaching out to take my hand here. I only wish I could also reach out and give them the Biggest Handshake I could possibly muster.

Alas. I must sit inside and let my imagination roam free in a most unusual time when rain has been falling for hours and hours and hours.

Is this weird or what?

j

[Billy]

montezumawell, nice writing I love the rain, I'm hoping my son doesn't get back too late from his youth group tonight, so I can run in this stuff!

Loving it!

[montezumawell]

I love the rain...I can run in this stuff!

Loving it!

Yea, verily! If it was daylight and people saw me running around outside getting totally sopping wet, they would have me arrested. The feeling of being totally satuated by water from the sky is such an alien concept these days in Arizona. (Well, maybe in monsoons, IF you happen to be under the right cloud.) This is just absolutely The Greatest!

Hopefully, it is a harbinger of things to come and, perhaps, we will have a wetter than normal winter. But, if it's not, at least we had tonight.
Small gifts and small pleasures make our small minds come alive.

j

[Billy]

Agreed

[te_wa]

dont get me wrong, Im not a kook and Im not superstitious... three days ago on Sunday night I was having this real intense dream about rain. Two days later it rained. Ok whatever, you say. Well, last night I had another dream that caused me to wake unexpectedly. It was about snow. Yes, snowing in Phoenix enought to stick and cause wrecks, like 2 inches or so. We'll see!

[Nighthiker]

Montezumawell-I did the samething except in my back yard. I also went for a hike in the rain and if their is fog this morning, I will hike in the fog.

[montezumawell]

We rec'd 1.25 inches from this last storm. The total appears to be consistent with other regional reports. Perhaps some HAZ members elsewhere, especially in The Pines could log their rainfall totals.

Water managers refer to something called a "Water Year." It is different than a calendar year. A water year begins on October 1 and ends on September 30 of the following year. Hence, this is the first real good, water producing storm of our current water year.

It looks like there are a series of storms lined up in the far Eastern Pacific region. It will be most interesting to see whether they track this far SW and/or whether they combine with subtropical moisture to produce a repeat of yesterday's blissful precipitation event.

You can watch the progress of these systems with a really cool graphic produced by the US Navy. Click on the link below and then click on the colorful blue and yellow graphic on the far top right corner. The varying shades of yellow and red are water vapor. We have found this one single graphic to be the most "instructive" of any weather graphic we've yet stumbled across on the web.

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/epac_westcoast.cgi

Also, if you are a "weather wonk," the best place to go for "food for thought" is the Flagstaff NWS text discussion of the weather. It will take you awhile to get the hang of all their acronyms but stick with it. You will get a real feel for the dynamic influences that produce (or fail to produce) weather here in the Sonoran Desert.

NOTE: It is the paragraph BELOW the generic "synopsis" that is most valuable. You can also click around and read past reports. They produce 3-4 per day. If this starts shaping up as a wetter than normal winter, the Flag text discussion will be THE place to hang out and get it tune with it.

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/gproduc ... HXAFDFLG_0

Look especially for reports signed "Peterson." That staffer has been at the Flag NWS office for roughly 25 years. His personal knowledge of Northern Arizona weather surpasses all of the fancy computer models.
His discussions make the "best read" of any of the staffers there.