Getting steamy out there.
It’s warming up right smart here in The Duck! City, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, with nothin’ but 90s in the 10-day forecast.
Could be worse, though. Here’s Pat O’B with the Southern Arizona weather!
They are predicting record heat down here later this week. Friday’s high predicted to be 101 here and 107 for Tucson. Saturday and Sunday will be 109 in the Old Pueblo. Night temps above normal too, entire period. The grid will be tested Thursday through Sunday.
Chillin’ like a villain.
We’ve resisted the temptation to deploy the refrigerated air, instead strategically adjusting blinds, curtains, and fans, and so when Miss Mia Sopaipilla feels a nap coming on she seeks out the cool spot of that particular moment, flattening out like a Russian-blue rug.
On today’s geezer ride one of my fellow graybeards interrupted the traditional jawboning at a High Desert trailhead to suggest we generate a little wind chill lest we melt into colorful puddles of fossil-fuel garb, sunscreen, and boner pills. And so we did.
You could call it a “rolling boil,” if only for headline purposes.
Mad Blog Media 
June 6, 2022 at 5:37 pm |
We’ve been playing the blinds up/down, windows and doors open/closed game here in the Bibleburg/Black Forest environs for the last 18 years. All to capture a moderate temp year-around in the old Casa.
Call us cheap or just trying to reduce energy demands or save some/many $$$$$.
Whatever …. the long-term trend is NOT comforting: See “A Great Aridness” by William deBuys.
Alas …. so many voices crying in the wilderness …..and yet the wilderness continues to grow! 🙂
June 6, 2022 at 7:53 pm |
This is the only place we’ve ever had that came with air conditioning. It’s such a temptation to turn it on, especially at bedtime. But jeez, it’s not even officially summer yet.
June 6, 2022 at 8:35 pm |
We have our AC set to 82 degrees, so it usually comes on about 1PM. We also keep the sun out as best we can. Also, we open everything up on the morning to cool the joint down before we button it up. And, we also keep a large saucer of water out in the front yard for the baby quail. If they wander in the back yard, Duffy goes all dog and tries to eat them.
June 7, 2022 at 4:59 am |
O, man, don’t let the Duffinator get those baby quail. Those little suckers are cute as hell. Funnier than classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
June 6, 2022 at 9:04 pm |
I switched over the controls from heating to cooling today and fired up the A/C just to see if it worked. Confident that it did, I set it at 82 Fake Degrees and let it sit there. Meanwhile, John Fleck is the prognosticator of doom on the river.
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2022/06/central-new-mexicos-rio-grande-is-beginning-to-dry/
June 7, 2022 at 5:04 am |
John is normally an optimist, but these are trying times.
A couple of the geezers rode the bosque a week or so ago and said they felt the place was in the early stages of distress. I’ve only been down a couple of times this year and a large catchbasin near the roundabout at 4th and Roy has been completely dry each time.
Meanwhile, it’s 68° at 5 a.m., with a high of 95° expected. I guess I’d better get my exercise in early or do without.
June 7, 2022 at 12:47 am |
As I contemplated rising out of slumber this AM (Monday), our heater kicked on to warm the house up a few degrees. We don’t need it so I need to remember to shut the thermostat off tonight and shut the heater down for the season in the morning. I am thankful for our cool spring thus far this year. It would be pleasant in October and look back on a fine Nordic summer.
Stay cool in the desert southwest boys and girls. At least you can relax knowing that your houses (or Lamborghini) won’t be floating away anytime soon. That is if you don’t live too close to an arroyo that overflows during a desert thunderstorm.
It’s interesting to note in J Fleck’s article about the Rio Grande being nearly dry in Al-B-Que back in 1983. If I recall correctly, I remember seeing photos of the diversion tunnels on the Boulder Dam being utilized for what may have been the first and only time back in 1984. If you’ve ever seen the diversion tunnels up close, they are mighty intimidating and to see them being utilized in person would be cool as sh**t. But unfortunately at this time, at the level that Lake Mead is at (dead bodies and all) it would take a cataclysmic precipitation event to require the diversion tunnels to be needed within the next five years or so.
June 7, 2022 at 5:07 am |
My people north in Colorado continue to report a cool, dampish stretch. Says one:
Meanwhile, in Sin City, the Review-Journal reports thusly:
Y’think?
June 7, 2022 at 7:07 am |
“The judge angrily retorts that this is no movie, this is real. In fact, he says, it’s the last reel of the vintage motion picture Highschool Madness”
Firesign Theater.
Several times years ago I fled the convention halls of Vegas and beelined it over to the Colorado river for a few sane days paddling below the dam. One year I paddled for a bit with a dude I thought was if not whacked out, at least an alarmist who kept insisting that in a few years there will be droughts that would lead to running gun battles in the SW over water. “Yeah, right, sure” I probably muttered. Years later I now wonder when the divergence pipelines will begin “borrowing “ water from our Great Lakes to keep the SW livable. “ This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around” Talking Heads
June 7, 2022 at 10:22 am |
We had a UV alert yesterday, so I kept the ride to an hour and a half. Plus, I managed to chafe the dickens out of my seated area a week ago and so am slowly building back time in saddle…ouch….damn….shit….ok, stand for the last half mile, etc.
I was looking at the weather map today in the People’s Daily and it had a low pressure front looking like it was over Colorado, which probably explains them being cool and damp and us feeling like rotisserie chickens.
Hey, Shawn, that dam is mighty impressive. I was five in 1959 when my mom and her boyfriend sent me to Sin City to stay with my uncle for the summer. They had to get special permission from the airlines to fly a kid that young on his own. So my uncle Joe drove us to Hoover and held me up looking down the mighty dam towards the power plant. I’ve been afraid of heights ever since.
I found out decades later that the reason I was sent off to Vegas for three months was that my mom and her boyfriend had an oopsie, which was quietly put up for adoption. I got home to a new puppy instead.
I got to meet that oopsie, Rich, for the first time about five years ago. Interesting guy. Never met him and he never met us but we seem to have all the same interests. Bicycling, motorcycling, higher education, and guns.
June 9, 2022 at 9:33 am |
It’s been an interesting pre-summer, that’s for sure. We keep getting 30% chance of rain days that turn into half an inch of precip. I’m personally for anything that keeps the fires away for another week.
June 7, 2022 at 9:57 am |
For those who may have never made it to see the Boulder dam (aka: Hoover dam) outside Vegas, the diversion tunnels I refer to are the overflow diversion tunnels at the top of the dam. When Lake Mead reaches a high enough level, something that occurred in 1983, not in 1984 as I indicated above, and that it may not ever see again in a very long time, water will spill around the dam through the side diversion tunnels. They tested the tunnels in about 1941 when they were building the dam, and then in 1983 the water level required their use. I believe also, that they opened the lower portion of the diversion tunnels a few years ago to flush out the canyon below the dam simulating what a flash flood would do prior to the dam’s construction.
Seeing that the level of Lake Powell is so low now and the canyon(s) above the lake are seeing sunlight again, I wonder if Hayduke has put the houseboat up for sale.
June 7, 2022 at 11:05 am |
We went there in 1987 on our way to the National Archery Championship in Vegas. We took the whole tour, and as we were waiting for the elevator back to the top, you could feel the floor vibrating. It spooked me since I was in LA for the Whittier Quake a few months earlier. When Sandy said I wonder what would happen to the damn in a large earthquake, I asked her to be quiet until we got back to the top. I then told her if the damn failed in a big quake we would be 5 pounds of ground round floating in an irrigation canal in Yuma.
June 7, 2022 at 8:42 pm |
We went to Vegas in February of 1988, not 1987. It was a delayed honeymoon. I was at the John Wayne airport when quake struck. I was waiting for a flight home after a business trip to Hughes Aircraft. I was really glad when the plane took off!
June 7, 2022 at 2:36 pm |
I was in West Hollywood for the Whittier, kipping on a pal’s floor, when all of a sudden everything started moving. Hi-yo, Silver! Ride ’em, cowboy.
Didn’t get to see The Big Dam until many years later when driving the long way to Interbike. It gave me The Fear, and the drive was not fun, so ever after I hung a left just past Kingman and drove the Bullhead City-Laughlin-Searchlight route instead. There’s some stunning scenery between Kingman and Highway 95, and most of it stands on end.
June 9, 2022 at 6:58 pm |
My only quake experience was in the Airport in Taiwan. I was traveling with VIPs so we were ensconced in the (wait for it) VIP lounge about two floors subterranean. The shaking wasn’t much to worry about I’m told, but my ass didn’t like it as all.
June 7, 2022 at 9:01 am |
Speaking of Sin City.
June 7, 2022 at 2:55 pm |
That’s a good version. I always liked Emmylou’s version from “Elite Hotel” too.
June 8, 2022 at 6:49 am |
classic
June 9, 2022 at 9:31 am |
In a perfect world, it would be a requirement of all union recording artists to record at least one duet with Emmylou every ten years. A little Emmylou goes great with everything.
June 9, 2022 at 5:50 pm |
Jeez I dunno about the duets. I’ve already got everything she ever recorded. I don’t think I have much room for more. Curiously though one of my favs is Spyboy the live album with the rocking band. Saw her with Daniel Lanois live doing Wrecking Ball.
June 8, 2022 at 7:21 am |
More grim news from John Fleck.
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2022/06/a-few-notes-on-the-rio-grande-in-2022/
June 9, 2022 at 7:30 am |
We have a 30% chance of wetting rains down here in the borderlands. Oh yeah! Go ahead, rain on my day.
June 9, 2022 at 9:26 pm |
Well, it rained for the first time since March today. Whoopee.
June 10, 2022 at 7:58 am |
We got enough to wet the pavement, but that’s it. We’ll take it! I think the mountains got more, especially on the NM/AZ border.
June 10, 2022 at 8:26 am |
Nada here. Not so much as a single solitary drop. And the forecast calls for near-record heat. Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sweating.