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24 hours of rain in the desert...headed your way
Mercury
Member Posts: 7,809 ✭✭✭
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
For those of you in the east, get ready, it is headed your way!
Merc
Comments
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.
He was trying to save a little girl.
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.