This may be my greatest work. I call it “Sturm und Drain.”
Very punny
Category: Rain
After the deluge
Too much of a good thing?
The National Weather Service reports an inch and a half (!) of precip’ at the Sunport yesterday. Downtown got flooded overnight, the power went out, the full Noah.
We knew it was bucketing down — the rain was coming in sideways as we hit the sack last night — but we weren’t expecting anything quite so biblical. Before bedtime I added an extra tiedown to our new(ish) ornamental plum, which got blown down the last time we had Shakespearean winds blasting through the back yard.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
Our highly unreliable weather widget reports a mere half inch of free water from Tláloc, but we’ll take it. I got up at stupid-thirty to double-check that I’d shut off the irrigation system. If the power croaked here we slept right through it.
So did the Journal. It’s one hell of a note when an old ink-stained wretch is compelled to rely upon the local TV stations for the 411 on the tempest.
Wave dynamics revisited
The fun and frolic continues apace here in the Land of Enchantment, a subsidiary of Netflix, Inc. Look for the miniseries “The Ten Plagues of Aztlan,” coming soon! “Episode 1: The Gabachos.”
Now it’s Las Vegas in the hot seat. More precisely, the wet seat, as flash floods close roads and force evacuations.
Word is Ruidoso is getting some rain, which, yay. It’s the proverbial good news/bad news scenario — helps with the fire, but not with the flooding. You gotta play the hand you’re dealt, I guess. Meanwhile, it seems full-time residents may be allowed to return Monday morning.
We woke to a light rain here at El Rancho Pendejo. By 8:30 we’d recorded 0.10 inch of rain since midnight, and we will take it, thank you. Sorta throws a spanner into the ol’ training schedule, but what the hell am I training for, anyway?
If it keeps up I don’t think I’ll have to worry about whether a fellow cyclist returns my friendly wave today. My old VeloNews colleague John Rezell broached the topic yesterday at The Cycling Independent, but I beat him to it by nearly three decades (h/t Khal S.).
In my dotage I see this churlish behavior from all manner of knuckleheads. Wave casually at a brother roadie, get The Great Stone Face. Say, “Good morning” to another hiker on a narrow stretch of trail, nuttin’ but nuttin’. Everyone has the AirPods in their ears and an iStick up their arses, I guess.
It doesn’t bother me much anymore. I keep waving and yielding trail as though it matters. Which it kinda does.
Surf’s up
“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.
(Not) for the birds
Hm. The weather seems less than ideal for the old bikey ridey this morning. The weather widget says we’ve gotten 0.15 inch since I oozed out of bed two hours ago, it’s still bucketing down, and I am no Laura Killingbeck. I prefer my velo-adventures sunny-side up with some toasty 65°-degree-plus temps if I can get ’em. Just ’cause I have mudguards doesn’t mean I wanna use ’em.
We Duck! Citizens enjoyed a high of 81° yesterday, well short of the record — 92° in 2022 — with zero precip’. In fact, the National Weather Service reports that we have had but a trace of moisture so far in May, and just 0.33 inch in April, a mere dribble compared to the usual half-inch.
Up to 0.24 inch since I started typing this post. Woof. We could corral those missing April showers today.
Anyone who has forgotten/is unaware how important water is to us here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where the yappy purse dogs roam free, can become wise following the online musings of water wizard John Fleck. Buy him a coffee if you can spare the funds; I attended one water-board meeting in the Seventies, as a cub reporter fueled by vile percolator joe, and I can assure you John needs all the proper java he can get.
In other news, our man Charles Pelkey is working the early shift in Laramie as local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and anyone who misses the glory days of Live Update Guy can catch his act on the Innertubes at Wyoming Public Media. That other fella he used to work with at LUG remains unemployable in print, broadcast, and online.
I do serve at least one small purpose, however. After my own cup of coffee I scattered some bird seed around under the patio cover so the tweeties could enjoy a snack out of the wet. Queuing up at the feeders today must feel like being a hobo outside a Seattle soup kitchen.
Mad Blog Media 