Tucson monsoons

The first of the major storms, on July 17, won the prize for being the loudest. We had pouring rain, lots of hail, and high winds.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, in our crazy house there’s no separate ceiling and roof. Our ceiling-that-is-the-roof consists of 5-inch thick wooden slats, placed close to each other, like wooden decking except thicker. The wood is then covered on top with some thin roofing material. So there’s no crawl space, no insulation…just hail beating on wooden beams. It was deafening and unsettling too.

Having hail come down when it’s 110º is also a little bit surreal.

Our screened-in porch flooded with about an inch of water, but the inside of the house stayed dry. I think we have finally fixed all the leaks that have been plaguing us since we bought the house.

Due to the high winds and heavy downpour, several trees in the neighborhood lost branches and there were even some trees down. We were grateful we took out the enormous mesquite that used to lean over our house.

The noise is quite muted in all the videos. It was actually very loud.

The water pooled several inches deep outside of the screened patio. It did seep under and through the screen to some extent, but the patio doesn’t flood nearly as often or badly as it did before we had it screened in.

In the next storm I nearly got myself killed by lightening. I have a pre-storm afternoon routine that involves taking Biska out to potty and cleaning up the yard. I bring in the pillows and cushions, dog toys, etc. and make sure everything is ready. I also pull the pool vacuum out of the pool (if I haven’t already that afternoon), which involves the use of a 10-foot metal pole. Yeah, you can tell where this is going.

Usually I prepare the yard for the storms well ahead of time. But on this particular day John was home, and we had gone to the grocery store. By the time we got home from the store, the storm was further along than I realized. I went outside and started my usual tidying up. I could hear the thunder in the distance but thought I had plenty of time.

I used the pole to grab the handle of my pool vacuum, and then set it down beside me as I hauled the vacuum up out of the water. Suddenly there was an enormously loud, high pitched, deafening noise, followed immediately by a huge flash of light. I found myself a few feet away from the pool, cowering in the grass. I wasn’t sure if I had thrown myself down in reaction (that’s what I think), or whether I was tossed down. But after a couple of stunned moments, during which I realized I was still alive and apparently unhurt, I scurried in the nearest door.

Later when I was trying to recount the events, I didn’t understand why I heard it before I saw it. Sound travels slower than light, so typically you see the flash and then hear the boom. A five second delay between the flash and the boom means the lightning is one mile away. So when there’s no delay, it’s very, very dangerously close. But apparently when it’s literally upon you, it can seem like it booms first and flashes second because our brains register sound faster than sight. That’s how close it was.

But I don’t think I was still holding the pole when it hit, because afterwards I saw that the pool vacuum was sitting on the edge of the pool. And I usually set the pole down before pulling up the vacuum. So I probably would have set it down several seconds before the lightning hit.

Yeah, so I’m alive.

Here’s pictures from another storm, this one on July 26.

On this evening we were able to go for a walk afterwards to take some photos at sunset of the flooding across the streets in our neighborhood.

The street is built to dip down low where it crosses the wash. So that water is very deep in the middle where the road dips down into the arroyo. After the rainwater recedes, city workers come out and clear away the deep sand that collects in the dip in the road.

In this next photo, note the footbridge in the background and how far the water is below it – a good 5 or 6 feet. Because in the next storm, two days later, we have footage of the water hitting that bridge.

Our next big storm was on July 28. You can see it gathering in the distance. It’s a weekend and John was enjoying the pool, but I was still shell shocked from my close encounter with lightning the week before and did not feel up for swimming with an approaching storm.

So yeah, that is an old fashioned TV antenna on our roof, pulling in local Tucson stations, but with a digital age twist. Instead of being directly wired to a TV, it goes to a box that allows John to access it using wifi through an app called Sling TV. The crazy thing is, he can access it from anywhere, so he was able to watch local Tucson TV when he was out in Albuquerque. So why would he even want to watch a local TV station? Football!

Also you can see we haven’t stucco’d the back part of the house yet. We want to build a porch roof or overhang, and want to get that figured out before we stucco.

This storm had very little wind, but the hail was alarmingly large.

The hail hit the roof so hard that sand drifted down from the cracks between the beams and left a fine layer of grit everywhere.

I know, about this time you’re all wondering why the heck we moved to this crazy place. No, actually, you all wondered that a long time ago and now just shrug and figure, whatever.

The flooding from that storm was very high and the arroyo overflowed its banks a bit here.

Here it’s hitting the footbridge that was 5-6 feet above the water during the previous storm I mentioned earlier. The bridge is about 8-10 feet above the arroyo in dry conditions.

Here’s the same arroyo where it crosses another nearby street. It’s called the Alamo Wash, and it crosses three streets in our neighborhood. Again it’s very deep in the middle where the road dips down as it crosses the arroyo.

There’s a city truck in this photo – the workers are probably just checking on things and putting signage up to not drive across the water (duh).

A good portion of the city lost their power in this storm. We’re just slightly southwest of where you see the “Costco Wholesale” in the middle of this screenshot.

The Alamo Wash is not pictured on the outage map because it’s too small, but it runs parallel to the Pantano Wash which is slightly to the east of us. The Pantano is the one you can see on the map that runs past both the Home Depot and the Costco. The Alamo and the Pantano are tributaries to the Rillito River, which is located to the north of us and runs westward. The Rillito is also mostly dry except during floods.

The larger arroyos don’t wash over streets the way our little one does. There are big bridges over the larger arroyos. Lots of people walk out to those bridges to watch the floodwaters when it rains.

By the way, a wash and an arroyo are essentially the same thing. I think the word arroyo is used more in New Mexico because it’s a Spanish term. Both Albuquerque and Tucson have a heavy Spanish influence, but it did seem stronger in Albuquerque – at least in the government and in the naming of things.

John and I had our electric power restored after several hours. We didn’t want to open the refrigerator and let the cold air out, so we tried to get take-out for dinner that evening. We had trouble finding anywhere open because many of the local establishments didn’t have power. We finally found an open Whole Foods. I was very happy with my shrimp salad and fruit, but John was disappointed with his sandwich. He liked his caramel bars though, lol.

We were lucky – some people lost their power for two or three days. But by morning our power was restored and our frozen and refrigerated food survived.

The round light that looks like a ceiling light in the photo is actually a solar-powered nightlight that is a feature of our solar tubes. I like them because the house is never completely black at night (we don’t have them in the bedrooms). They aren’t very bright at night, it just looks that way in the photo. But they are solar – and handy during power outages!

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Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism