Deer Canyon Folks.org

Another day, another 1/4 inch of rain. Today’s storm actually approached us from the north — don’t see that too often this time of year. I wish I had gotten a photo of it as it came across the valley. It was a big wall of black cloud, very ominous looking, with a dome in the clouds where the rain was.

I started pondering the fact that we have rufous hummingbirds here in droves now (started 3 or 4 weeks ago), but we never see them on their way north. After some web searching I learned that they travel through the Mexican state of Sonora, starting in January/February, for their northward migration, and then up the US west coast, arriving in their breeding territory by late April. Some go as far as Alaska! Theirs is the longest bird migration of all when measured in body length: 48.6 million body lengths of distance. — I would have to travel more than 2 times around the earth to match that comparable distance; and the hummers do it twice a year. Can you wrap your brain around that? I can’t. — Which explains why they set out so early, and that explains why they don’t fly through New Mexico on their way north. It’s far too cold and there’s nothing to eat! But many of the rufous travel back to Mexico by the Rocky Mountain flyway, and those are the ones we are seeing here, obviously.

I’m feeling less inclined to judge the rufous hummingbirds for hogging the feeders!

Around noon today we had a thunderstorm that lasted maybe half an hour, included hail, and really drenched us: 1.3 inches in that brief time.

To put that in perspective:

Happy Camp has 2975 square feet of roof total. 2975 sq ft  = 428400 sq inches. That times 1.3 inches of rain = 556920 cubic inches of rain. Which totals (brace yourself) 2410.9 gallons of water. In about half an hour.

That doesn’t begin to account for the gallons of water rushing down off the mesa, through the arroyos. The arroyo east of our house looked like a whitewater stream, running high and hard. We have many places where we have placed brush or rocks to slow the water down (keeping more of it on the land here), but in a storm this intense, the water just pounds downhill.

And guess what: the clouds have gathered again, and the thunder is beginning anew.

Yet another 0.3 inch of rain has come down today, in intermittent gentle showers. Also, it’s 67° out, and I don’t think it ever cleared 70. Clouds are us.

Oh, and it’s raining again. 

That would be me, alas, the result of summer travels.

Let’s see, we’re well into our summer pattern of afternoon thundershowers now. Nine days ago (Thursday 7/15), as we were preparing to head out of town, there was an excellent afternoon downpour. I didn’t have the time to check the rain gauge then, but I’d estimate it was at least 0.2 inch of rain.

When we returned from the airport last Sunday evening it had clearly stormed at some point that day, and there was 0.15 inch of rain in the gauge.

It has rained negligible amounts several afternoons this week. Then yesterday afternoon we had quite an excellent thunderstorm (the cats ran to hide under the bed, so you know it was a real one) and received 0.3 inch of rain. Overnight it rained again, leaving another 0.2 inch in the gauge. And it’s clouded up and starting to thunder now, even though it’s only 11:30 am.

There may well have been rain on the days we were out of town. So I cannot give an accurate total for the week. That always happens to me in the summer; just when the raining gets good, we’re out of town and miss some of it. 

I haven’t watered the garden since sometime in early June, although we do water trees in order to dump the cached rain from the barrels, so they won’t overflow when the next rainfall hits.

Tibs hasn’t been around this week. We were into a very good schedule with Tibs before our trip and then we humans disappeared for several days, so he got out of the habit of looking for us. That’s okay: I know he’ll be back at some point and he’s most skillful at extracting peanuts from the over-generous people who live here, so he must have quite a stash by now.

We are about to fledge our second batch of baby phoebes. This is the first year the Say’s phoebes who nest on our house have had time to get two broods out. I wonder if that is because the winter was wet, so there was a lot of food when they first got here.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!

I’m not sure that the weather honchos are confirming it yet as the actual monsoon season, but we are in a pattern of frequent afternoon thundershowers. Yesterday in a late afternoon storm we received just short of another 2/10s inch of rain. Right now it has clouded up and cooled down; breezes are intermittently up and we’re hearing thunder. So we have a good chance for more precipitation.

Bees! I know the Russian sage is not a native, but the bees sure love it. They also love the fernbush, which is a native. So our garden is quite noisy now. The birds also are loud, especially in the mornings. A spotted towhee let out a couple of bellows yesterday outside the nook and almost deafened me. The lesser goldfinches, who love eating the petals of the chocolate flower, have a chirping volume way out of proportion to their body size.

So, despite the advertisements, it’s noisy here, but in a good way.

Ah, there goes the rain now.

Update: and the rain stopped in 10 minutes. Well, maybe later...