Big Storm!

Yesterday had a large storm cell move through the valley and today another one (and more) came through.

The clouds were moving and massing fairly quickly.

This was about noon - looking WNW from Tovrea's Castle.  The wind was blowing west and the cloud was moving north and east, then the north end started to move more to the east.  In a couple minutes the wind was blowing strongly to the east.

Here's a look toward the WSW of the same clouds.

I'm pretty sure that system is the one that swung around and hammered Mesa pretty hard.

A couple hours later here is another system cutting across and moving to the NW before all of a sudden coming south.

This is looking from the SW corner of Pueblo Grande.  Those are some dark clouds!

 We finally got some decent rain at Papago Park

The washes began to fill and run, but it didn't rain as hard here as it did at South Mountain this time.



South Mountain had golfball-sized hail and some good flooding.

In the west valley, they had huge hail. Our neighbor was driving in it and has a cracked windshield, cracked grill and light cover and hundreds of good sized dents in the hood.  I will see if I can get some pictures of it tomorrow.  News was out in our neighborhood with trees, fences, and power poles down. So basically, lots of damage in certain areas.

Storm Clouds

Yesterday was supposed to have 90% chance of rain and this little storm cell at sunset was the closest we came to seeing rain and it moved north.  We got a few drops, but not much more.  Anyhow I liked how the clouds started swirling in anticipation of this cell. I had to take two pictures and stitch them together to get so much sky.

Cloudy Days

We had some decent rain on Tuesday. One of those long, easy showers we're used to seeing in the winter here in the desert.

We heard more rain was on the way for late Wednesday and all day Thursday. But the sky was clear in the morning and only a few clouds by mid-afternoon.

By sunset there wasn't anything that looked like rain yet.

Still no rain when we went home for the night, but the weather radars were showing a little of what was in store.  It started raining early Thursday and only stopped for a bit mid-day Friday.  Cells and pockets of heavy rainfall, strong winds in the afternoon, and in the late afternoon Thursday there was a tornado watch! That certainly doesn't happen often out here.  Friday's rain was back to a gentler one. In fact, it is still coming down as I'm typing this.  A long winter rain is just what was needed out here after a long drought - something like 10 years of below average rainfall.  Lots of snow in the high country and rain in the lower part of the state should refill the resevoirs quite nicely.

Clouds over South Mountain Park

I know, I know, I'm horribly behind in this blog thing. No excuses, my monitor is much better and I just haven't uploaded pictures lately. I'm still taking them, however. This one is from last month. Our late monsoon season had some huge clouds - only one or two rains. These are actually south of South Mountain Park, the picture is taken from Papago Park.

Fluffy Clouds

When you don't see clouds for days on end sometimes, it's nice when they finally do roll in.

Even if there isn't any rain in them and it's been at least a couple months since the last rainfall.