This, our first good Monsoon rain of this 2011 Monsoon Season. This, from July 12th 2011
It's July 4th and gratefully the weather outlook ..looks as though Monsoon Season has begun! That is to say that for every day in the extended outlook, either what we call
scatters or
isolaters are predicted. This would be a blessing for the wild fire crews!
We arrived here on a July 4th and that year ..early in Monsoon, these
scatters and
isolaters many times passed right by here but notta drop on us! One..as big as any metro area in the US..came within a 12/ miles of us! We could smells it..and feel it's coolness, indeed it's moisture, but not a drop of rain. That season, we did end up getting some storms.
Not a true Monsoon, but probably some marketing person in the governors office ..here in North Central and most particularly here at NMO ..they come out of the
Jemez Mountains ..where during Monsoon Season..it's raining every day. Hence all the marshes and even swamps up in there.
In the afternoon, we can feel the humidity rising ..way up sometimes, to a whopping 60% or so! Then we hear the thunder and lo and behold..if we're lucky, it hits us many time with tremendous violence. Sometimes causing hail the size of softballs..and
flash floods.
It, along with snowmelt, accounts for a huge portion of the moisture we get here in the high desert ..and ends up lasting as long as it lasts. Sometimes a month or two, but sometimes more. In a good year, we'll get slammed with it every day! That first year here, it lasted til September, when we got our most vicious slamming.
Along with it comes huge winds, but not all day, like in
Windy Season.
The pic above is from a September Monsoon and we got hit all day ..til, as you see, just before sunset. The sandy high desert here, absorbes the rain..no matter how much, in a very short period of time..OR runs it off! That's how the
flash floods start.
This place is AWESOME..that word overused, but not for this place! Wanna live here?
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