“Dude. It’s actually raining,” I told my man Hal Walter yesterday via Messages. “If it continues at this torrid pace we could have an ounce of water on the property in two, three days.”
Ho ho, etc. That was at 2:19 p.m. Over the next four hours we got nearly an inch of rain with a side of hail that shotgunned more than a few leaves off the backyard maple.
We were under a flash-flood warning and our cul-de-sac looked like a pond tipped on one side, draining into the arroyo behind the house, one of many that funnel water from the foothills to the Rio.
We were happy to get the rain, seeing as we have a couple stupid-hot days coming up later in the week. The neighbor girls were dancing barefoot beneath umbrellas in the runoff.
And I was delighted to have logged a little trail time in and around Elena Gallegos Open Space before the mierda hit the abanico. Those trails hold up pretty well, but 0.86 inch of rain in a few hours is a big ask. We got just 0.27 inch in March, 0.33 inch in April, 0.06 inch in May, and none at all in June. Until yesterday.
In its absence it’s easy to forget the sheer power of running water. A few people got a harsh reminder yesterday; at least three were swept away in the arroyo system, and only two made it out alive.
Mad Blog Media 
Good for you guys! We could use some right now, and you have me curious about what rain we have gotten here in the last 90 days. Maybe the Rio Grande is running today, at least for a little while.
Man, it’s been something. We’ve gotten another quarter-inch this morning, and it looks like we might have some drizzle on and off throughout the day.
But then, boom: Back on the griddle. 93° Tuesday, 100° Wednesday, 102° Thursday. …
Just checked at rainlog.org. There is a Rainlog volunteer station about 1/4 mile from our casa, joint, place, money pit , or whatever you call it. We got 0.93 inches in March, 0.13 in April, and none in May. We have received 3.34 inches since January 1st. It’s dry, and June is usually dry unless the monsoon starts early.
Congrats on the agua from the sky. Sounds truly needed with the precip totals you have listed. We are at 6.08″ but still low. I have to say the pic from the Elena Gallegos area makes me homesick for the hills and mountains of southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. It is getting time to pull the plug on the northern Rocky Mountains. Sunshine looks so damn nice.
We needed it, badly. It’s gonna be a long fire season. Snow is the real deal, but we don’t have anyplace to store snowmelt until the water wizards come up with an alternative to El Vado dam.
Maybe what we need is a desalinization plant on the West Side and a real long straw over to the Pacific.
Don’t give the pols any ideas, or that will be their next bullshit campaign promise.
It will be great! Most people don’t know how much water is in the Pacific ocean. I do, because my cousin went to MIT, and I have a very large brain. You won’t believe the water you’re going to get, and for free! It’ll be unlike the world has ever seen. Yuge, I tell you.
It may be distasteful to say it, but I suspect an advanced chemist might agree that the cost of converting human urine into potable water is less expensive then converting sea water into the same. Most of us likely know that it doesn’t rain much in space and it costs a lot of money to launch weight into orbit, so there’s a reason they named Tang “tang”.
A quick check of our weather history indicates we have a typical 1″ or so of precip thus far this June.
How long does it take in your sage opinion POG, for the trails in your area to properly dry after rain?
There’s some toilet-to-tap already going on, in places like Clark County, Nevada (home to Sin City) and Orange County, Calif. I haven’t looked around to see where else it’s happening, but I’d expect to see more of it as people keep crowding into the desert, where the water mostly isn’t.
George Packer takes a look at Phoenix in this issue of The Atlantic, and trots out the famous adage, “Whisky is for drinking, and water is for fighting.”
Meanwhile, I went out for a short trail run the day after our rainstorm and damp spots were few and far between. The ground is thirsty and the arroyos efficient. It takes a lot of water to make mud in these parts, though the quick inch we got sure gullied up a couple of poorly setup hills on my route.
On today’s road ride there were stretches of sand and gravel spread across the road in spots, mostly up in Sandia Heights. But basically it was as though it had never happened.
Tell you what, though: The cacti sure appreciated the rain.
Them cacti sure are purdy.
Wired recently published an interesting article about a bike theft ring that might interest a few:
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valleys-fanciest-stolen-bikes-trafficked-mastermind-jalisco-mexico/
With the story of bike theft indicated and knowing that a few of us have the benefit of homes with garages, have you ever reviewed the safety of your garage door? Apparently on many homes, the center section of a larger two car garage door will bow in slightly in the center at the top when pressure is applied. The deflection can be enough that a capable thief can stick a wire coat hanger like device through the upper gap and capture the garage door release pull rope and handle, and then release and raise the garage door. When I first heard about this I tested it on my garage door and yes, it worked for me. – I was able to release the handle and subsequently the door, and simply lift it up. A quick resolution is to put a simple plate like barrier in front of the pull rope and handle. I zip tied a piece of double wall cardboard onto the pull bar of my garage door that resides directly in front of the pull rope and handle, and this did the trick. When trying to insert a thin object into the gap of the door, the cardboard deflects the wire away from the rope and makes it difficult to try to open the door. Because thieves don’t normally try to spend too much time opening a door in a visible location, the cardboard plate works fairly well. I believe in the past I found that a company or two were making this type of device in plastic sheet that homeowners could purchase and install.
Damn bike thieves anyway.
There were smash-and-grab outfits working Colorado and New Mexico bike shops not long ago, driving stolen vans through the front windows of the shops, loading up on high-end bikes, and then either selling them Stateside or taking them across the border. BRAIN wrote up one of the cases where someone actually got handed some jail time.
I’ve heard about that garage-door trick, but with another angle: popping out one of the decorative windows on the top of the door and then accessing the pull rope that way.
We live in a fairly dense cul-de-sac (nine houses) and someone is nearly always home (several retirees, one stay-at-home grandma, people coming and going all the time). We have a powerful streetlight, and any vehicles that don’t belong here get eyes on them real quick. You can see every house in the cul-de-sac from every house in the cul-de-sac, and three of them have dogs.
We’ve had burglaries in the neighborhood, but none in the cul-de-sac in the 10 years we’ve lived here. I think (hope?) we’d be a high-risk target.
on that door release lever there is a return spring mounted between a hole in the lever and another in the door carrier. Put a thin cable/zip tie between the two holes and pull it snug. That will stop thieves from pulling down the release from outside. If you have a power failure and need to open the garage door just cut the zip tie.
Out in the dark garage, up on a ladder, cussing and searching for the gawddam zip tie. Nope. I’m getting older and wiser now, and something tells me that you (a more wiser and getting younger everyday soul) probably wouldn’t mess with getting up there either.
Good thinkin’ there, Hoss. Where’d you discover that bit of wisdom?
My biggest problem is overcoming my own easily distracted nature. I drove off the other day and left my garage door wide open. Duh, etc. I was astonished that we didn’t have a battalion of evildoers carrying off our proud-ofs.
I do keep all the bikes locked together using a series of stout cables. That should add about 10 seconds to any competent home burglar’s shift.
“Reach me that angle grinder, Slick. This dude thinks he’s smart.”
I’m not sure where the ziptie solution came from. I have been doing it for at least ten years. Maybe I came up with it in one brief episode of smart. Hasn’t happened since then.