Big Rain Fills Wash

Yesterday, I finally had a nice sunny morning with enough time to get a big batch of rice cooked in the solar oven. The weather has been uncooperative lately with partial cloudiness and wind on a regular basis. Partial cloudiness in the morning is not what one wants during the monsoons.

The best storms build up when it is clear and hot early in the day. By mid to late morning, puffy clouds are building on the horizon which by early to mid afternoon turn into dark threatening clouds. Eventually the accompanying wind brings the scent of imminent rain to one's nose. Then it's time to move indoors.

Big raindrops began to fall, about four times larger than the average rain drop. I quickly hurried the dogs outside for a last chance to do their business before the storm. Good thing, too, because within a few more minutes, the rain was pelting down. The wind kicked up, with gusts up to 45 mph, blowing the water off the roof rather than allowing it to run into my buckets. This kept up for a good bit of time, during which I ran out onto the porch to belatedly try to cover up a few things. In just a minute or two, I was drenched due to the wind blowing rain across the entire porch. Hopefully everything out there will dry out in a day or two.

I called my sweetie in town to ask how the weather was down there. Usually it would be a simple matter of logging onto the Internet and checking a centrally-located weather station at the University of Arizona. However, I'd unplugged the computer when the lightening and thunder started up, and then the power went out a few minutes later. My sweetie complained that it was hot and sunny in town.

This is very typical for our monsoon rains. He checked the weather forecast and it called for "isolated thunderstorms" with some heavy rains and wind. My sweetie was able to see from the satellite photos that the storm center was north of our house, and was really dumping the moisture up there.

The next time I looked out the window, I noticed a truck passing very slowly on the road. Hm, that's interesting. Then I noticed another car stop and then proceed slowly by. The next car stopped, the driver got out for a minute, got back in the car, and turned around. By this time it had dawned on me that there must be water in the wash. It certainly had not rained enough locally to cause the wash to fill with run-off water but the rain up north drains down my direction.


Hoo boy! No wonder the cars were turning around. This may not look like much water, but it takes only six inches of flowing water to sweep a car right off the road.

You'd be amazed how many people do not understand the power of water. In fact, the cost of rescuing people who insist on driving across flooded roads finally prompted the state to pass the Stupid Motorist Law here. People who drive around barriers blocking off flooded roads and subsequently need to be rescued can now be billed for the cost of their rescue.

Flash floods come quickly, especially in situations just like this storm where the heavy rain was miles away. You can see an example of a typical Arizona flash flood in the 40 second video clip at the bottom of this page. Check out the other monsoon videos on that page, too. This one from the flash flood in 2007 shows the Rillito River which is a completely dry wash about 10 feet deep most of the year. I was walking along the path by this wash when it started to crest over the top during that storm. My friend and I watched a huge cylindrical tank the size of a semi-truck trailer go bobbing down the floodwaters, almost crashing into the bridge before being sucked down under it.

There were no signs or barricades put up on the road by my house, so I just kept my fingers crossed that nobody would get swept off the road into my wash. Until the water subsided, only the bigger vehicles attempted the crossing; smaller ones turned around to try to find another route home.


Here is a picture of the water rushing off the road into the wash. There is a drop-off of several feet into the wash, but the running water was almost up to the level of the road.


My usually dry sandy wash was a raging torrent of muddy water. While this was exciting to see, it also made me just a wee bit nervous.


Just a few hours later, the water had subsided to the barest of trickles down the wash. The dark color you see on the surface of the sand is iron. It brings back memories of playing with magnets as a child, dragging them through the dirt to pick up all the iron particles.


You can see how the wash has been scoured clean. I'm sure glad we hadn't tried to plant our berries (raspberry, blackberry, and boysenberry) down on the banks yet. We probably would have planted them too low and they would have been swept away. They need to be planted near the tops of the banks, probably in the fall to give them time to get really well-established before the next monsoon season.


Before we do much gardening, we need to see what happens in a few more big storms. It's supposed to be stormy through the weekend.

edited