First major monsoon storm of the season

Yesterday, which was the day after the insanely beautiful sunset, we had our first major monsoon storm.

Water pouring off our roof:

Someday we would like to get a rain barrel to save all that water for slower release into the garden. It was a lot of gallons of water in a very short time! The city encourages capturing it, because otherwise it just floods the streets and causes havoc.

We decided to go for a walk to watch the storm fill the arroyos, even though I was nervous in all the thunder and lightning. I like thunder and lightning, but I’m more comfortable watching and listening to it from under my porch roof than I am running around out in the midst of it.

We were immediately completely soaked through, even though I wore rain gear (so much for my useless rain gear, I might as well of just worn shorts and a t-shirt). Also we nearly ruined our phones trying to take photos; the air was just full of flying rain. The pictures look surprisingly calm and clear. In reality it was loud and intimidating and ridiculously wet.

Here is the footbridge near the school a couple blocks from our house that I’ve posted photos of before. The guy in his bare feet had stopped his pickup truck (because there’s no way even the largest pickup truck could go through that water) and he had gotten out and walked onto the foot bridge to take a photo. It’s a little incongruous to see bare feet in a raging storm, but it was very hot, and he probably left his flip flops in the car so as to not lose them in the water.

The water was actually quite a lot deeper than it looks in this next photo, because the road dips way down at the arroyo crossing, where you can see the standing waves.

The floods can be very dangerous, and Tucson did have one death in the storm yesterday. I don’t know the details, but she was pulled from a larger arroyo a couple of miles from our house. The arroyos (washes) are typically dry, but can be very deep and fast during a flash flood.

By this morning, this arroyo was completely dry again. There was just some soft sand left on the road, that I had to drive my Mini Cooper through.

After the rain quit, we took a second walk to go look at the larger arroyo.

This is also within walking distance from our house.

We saw a small palo verde tree down while on our walk. John also saw some larger trees down when he went on some errands this morning.

All the critters came out after the rain to celebrate. I believe this is a Couch’s spadefoot toad.

I believe this is a desert spiny lizard:

Then this morning, we went on a hike to see the wet desert. We went first thing in the morning but it was still a hot, humid hike. We only hiked for about an hour. The trailhead for this hike is only about a 20 minute drive from our house. It was a nice way to start the day.

We believe this bird is a pyrrhuloxia, also called a desert cardinal.

The saguaro cactus bloomed last month; multiple large white flowers on the ends of the arms. This month you can see the fruit and seed pods split open and showing their red insides. From a distance, they look like red flowers.