Sunday, July 22, 2007

Stormy Season

This past week has brought some strange weather to Casa Grande. We had a HUGE dust storm earlier in the week that dumped more dirt on our patio than I’ve ever seen in any other haboob. Yuck. I’m so glad we invested in a leaf blower. What a great invention. Because of the Arizona drought, we have all been asked to just sweep our houses and driveways instead of spraying with water so the patio stays a bit grungy but at least we can blow away most of the grit. Here's a great picture of the dust storm rolling in.


Don’s handy dandy weather station says we had 37 mile an hour wind gusts and we noticed a few tree limbs split on the way to work. I heard that a few awnings were lost in the storm but I didn’t see any damage myself. Don’t know whose houses were affected. Don and I did a walk around each of the homes we’re watching and didn’t find any damage. We saw a lot of dirty patios….but no damage.

We also had some RAIN with two of the storms. Each storm dropped less than an inch but in Arizona, that’s a downpour as everything drains off the hard packed earth into the ditches…or washes as they’re called here. Up near Phoenix and down in Tucson there were some washed out roads due to the rushing water. Nothing serious but as usual, a few dummies would attempt to drive through the flooded area and get carried away so they had to be rescued.

The good news is that the storms lower the temperatures. Last night it was down to the low 70s. We sat outside to watch the lightning for a while but Don actually got cold and went in the house. The lightning just fills the sky and is awesome to watch.