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The rain has finally come back to the desert. I don't know if the drought if finally over but the ground is saturated from several very good rains.

Northern Arizona was cloudy today, I flew last weekend, I didn't have to fly today so I decided to turn off the cell phone and go deep into a desert canyon. Life finds a way through and wastes no time when water comes. Everywhere there were hundreds of tiny fishhook cactus in full glorious bloom. These guys are about 1&3/4" in diameter.

Every time I go into the outdoors, the wilderness, the desert, my spirit is renewed. I revel in this wild world where perpective is restored. Everything makes sense out there, mysterious as it may be.

Click here for Fishook Cactus

If you look close you can see why they call it a fishook cactus.

Water has come back to carve the granite canyons once more. Water is life out here and it has been absent for a long time. The week have been selected out and the strong will thrive.

Waterfall on Granite

Ahhh, pics are soooo pretty! Love the pink of those flowers and clearness of the water.

My rain catcher got 3" of rain last nite. The trees are so much cleaner and happier looking. Hope it keeps up for a few more weeks.

I wonder how much water it would take to really help the lakes and rivers?

Azscrapper wrote:My rain catcher got 3" of rain last nite.
I wonder how much water it would take to really help the lakes and rivers?

3" is awesome! I hope this keeps up too. It is going to take a lot more than we are going to get to fill up those lakes. Every time I fly over Roosevelt I cannot believe how empty it is. I like the desert to be lush. Our subtropical desert is supposed to get good rains twice a year.

Almost an inch here in SCW.

I got 2 1/2 here

I seen on the news that officailly we need 9 more inches of rain to get out of drought status. Officailly "state wide," the way they measure it, we've got one inch so far and a normal monsoon provides 5-7 inches. Remember this is an el'nino year, so the monsoons should end early, but we should have a wet winter.

If anyone can explain how they calculate that state wide rain total I'd be interested in hearing it. I know I've had over an inch at my house as do most people I've heard from.