24 hours of rain in the desert...headed your way

Mercury

In the last 24 hours, it has rained almost non-stop here in Tucson. We got 1.5"+ in many parts of the city.

For those of you in the east, get ready, it is headed your way!


Merc

William81

Raining in central MO right now...will turn to snow later tonight

armilite

I think thats the one were getting as well and its gonna end up in Boston.

ChrisInTempe

Arizona has two wet seasons. Summer and winter. Usually summer is the wetter one.

Mostly the rains are crossing from southwest to northeast and just sort of skirt the southeast corner of the state. So Cochise County sees a bunch of rain, rest of the state gets sprinkles. Those years, southern New Mexico benefits from a lot of rain.

Every once in a while the Jet Stream dips far enough south, and far enough west, that the warm damp air moving from SW to NE shifts more westerly and is cooled faster, before blowing past Arizona. That's a summer thing, "Monsoon Season".

In 1983 and 1993 it came on so strong we had major flooding. Saw a small office building fall into a river in Tucson in '83. A DPS Air Rescue helo crashed on the way to a flood rescue and the crew died. We pulled people off the roofs of cars. Saw a house floating down river. Saw an old lady's Cadillac compressed by the force of water under a little concrete wash crossing. Then the water pushed the concrete structure sideways a bit. We never found the lady. There's quite a few people lost in those seasonal floods that we never found.

All in places where the rivers are dry bottom sandy expanses filled with weeds for year after year. Some have cars and trucks and missing people buried deep I think. Found a pickup truck once, by the radio antenna just sticking up out of the sand.

We are overdue here for a seriously wet season, either summer or winter. Think bridges washed out, interstate highways turned into islands of stranded cars, every drainage in the state with running water in it. No way to get between Tucson and Phoenix by land. Been a long time since the last one.

We need the water. Would prefer it come over a longer period than all at once like the flood years. Give it time to soak in, instead of just wiping stuff out all the way to the delta south of Yuma.

grumpygy

It was probably 83 a friend lost his brother to those floods. In San Diego.

He was trying to save a little girl.

Irish 8802

Raining here in Missouri now and has been all day...Lived in Tucson for 5 years in the mid 70's, X,is still there,Would be a pity if her a-- got washed away in an arroyo.(wishful thinking).

montanajoe

turned to snow here,,[;)][;)]

machine gun moran

April rains around Phoenix could sometimes reach seeds that had been dormant for years, and would produce a beautiful (but very temporary) garden in the desert. Then the place would become the usual 'Furnace Flats' again for another 6 months.

I went to a dry riverbed crossing once that was just northwest of Phoenix (the Agua Fria River and Jomax Road) during a heavy two days of rain. The riverbed was full, fast, and deep. Before long, a car came by in the river, rolling over and over as it passed. A short time later, a hardtop Jeep came by, doing the same thing. Once when I was prospecting, I came across a car in a sandy riverbed that had just a corner of the roof sticking out, and from the roof style, appeared to be about a 1930's vintage.

Flash flooding takes unwary people out, every year.