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pete

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
Some of you may have heard about the epic flooding in Phoenix, AZ. Where I live, Mesa, AZ, we had 4.19" of rain. It's still raining.

State of Emergency and all that. My street was beginning to flood when I left for work this AM. I think we've had about another inch since then.

I was just mentioning to Helen and Gandalfe the other day that we really don't have that much in natural disasters out here.
 
No worries.

It's bright and sunny (well, the sun is going down) at the moment. No more rain. Grand rainfall total from the weather post around the corner was 4.26". This shattered the record for most rainfall in the Phoenix area ever, even in the downtown Phoenix area (2.37").

There's a big NFL football game in AZ, tonight. Not that I particularly care about football, but I was interested in seeing if the game would be cancelled due to the State of Emergency. My wife, who teaches at a private school, got to go home early and a lot of schools either let out early or didn't even open. Large sections of major highways were closed, too. I also heard there was a big water main break in the north Phoenix area.

I had the farthest to drive into work and the most rainfall to deal with. I got in 15 minutes early. Nobody else in my office got in on time, including my boss. I think the latest person was about 3 hours late.
 
I'm surprised you went to work. When I saw the news last night, I for sure thought: Pete will have stayed home from work today. He wouldn't be one of those people driving out there. Would he? But then the footage was likely from Sunday, or from another part of town... Silly man...

I used to have to go to work in all forms of natural disasters--being a paramedic tends to require it ;) -- but in my last job I turned into the greatest wimp. After living 8 1/2 years in the Maritimes, and having out of necessity learned how to drive in real winter conditions, I just decided I would telecommute to my job in Vancouver on snow days. My job wasn't worth dying, getting injured, or crashing my car for.
 
I've mentioned that AZ has something called the Stupid Motorists Law. It essentially says that if you get yourself into a flooded stream/wash/etc., you get to pay for your own rescue.

This blog has some of the shots of the flood I've seen repeated a few times (no guarantee of any other content, folks). The "Arizona Freeway" one is the Interstate 17 (aka "I-17") freeway and 35th avenue. From where I work, that's about 5 miles north. The one from 43rd Ave and the I-17 is about 5 miles west of here. The largest area of 4" or so deep water I went through, and the 3" of water draining off the freeway. There are no washes or rivers near me. I take one long main street to the freeway then take the freeway into work, so no real problems. If I was in the middle of the desert, I wouldn't have bothered. My friend that DOES live in the middle of the desert came in, too, tho. Both of us have little Japanese cars.

This article has pics of Stapley and the US 60 (a 8-lane freeway). I live maybe two or three miles north and three or four miles east of that. I do note that the pic is of a rather new area. There's an awful lot of "new" out here, but my neighborhood was built in the early-to-mid 1970s. We also have irrigation canals on the main street a 1/4 mile west of us. That probably helped a lot.

By the time I came home, yesterday. almost all the water not in a deep depression had evaporated (I was watching a weather station: it went from 98% humidity to 85% in an hour. Our all-time low is about 3%). We did get some rain last night, but not much. Supposed to be a bit more in the next couple days. The rainfall we got in Mesa is almost double the amount expected for the entire monsoon season. Phoenix had a bit more than what's expected for the entire season (final tally of 3.29"). Wealtherunderground.com reports that the city to the south and west of me, Chandler, got 6.09" in one area.

We've had a drought in this part of AZ for 15-20 years, so extra water is always appreciated. Sorry that I can't help the folks in CA.
 
When we lived in Longmont, CO, heavy rains were unusual enough that the city had no storm drains. During the rare frog-strangler we could watch the water creep up from the street toward our house. Closest it got was about five feet. But no worries about flooded basements; the soil was too shifty to tolerate them.

As I recall, we got maybe 25 inches of precip a year, over half of it in spring snows.
 
Wow. Phoenix is supposed to be a desert. I guess the only other disasters are the haboobs. (I like that name.) My daughter and granddaughter live in Phoenix. I need to give them a call. I 15 one of the major routes north and south in Utah was closed today due to flooding. I guess Arizona is sending some of their fun our way.
 
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The haboobs -- dust storms -- aren't really that bad, as far as I've experienced. I've been out here for a couple of the mega-sized ones. Yes, if it gets really windy, you could get some roof damage. We replaced ours around 7ish years ago. Visibility? Most of the time it's really fine sand and just makes it look a little hazy, even though the actual dust cloud is impressive. If you're in the middle of the desert during a sand storm, and I have been, it's like really heavy fog.

I have been stuck near one of the little airports around me when a monsoon hit, so I didn't have any ground clutter. I did have to pull over because it was like someone was tossing a bucket of water at my windshield. Fortunately, those storms are like 10min to 45min of the buckets of rain, then an abrupt stop. It'll probably rain again in a couple hours.

I note that I've been mentioning "in the middle of the desert" a few times. There are large stretches of open desert out here that I do occasionally drive through, like from the beginning of Scottsdale (where Loop 202 & 101 meet, going north to Paradise Valley), which goes through an Indian reservation. That's about 24 miles. Another route I occasionally drive is the Route 87 to Fountain Hills, which goes through another Indian reservation. That's another 20ish mile trek through the desert. Most of the time, I'm going to and from work on the Loop 202 or the US 60 to I-10. While there are some areas that are more exposed than others, it's pretty urban/suburban.
 
It rained again. A lot. 1.55" where I am and Phoenix got 1.64" (I think the highest total in the area was 2.85"), breaking a record and bringing their monthly total up to 5.09". It's supposed to rain a bit more, today, so they might break their monthly record.

If you listen to the videos at the like I gave you, above, Laveen is a farming community that's a bit south of Phoenix -- yes, we have farms out here :). The flooded portion of I-17 is a little south of the section of Phoenix that flooded last time.

We also had the fun feature of one section of town getting pummeled by rain and another getting light rain or squat. I left my house when it was "light rain" to pick up some take-out about 5 miles away. That area was getting pummeled. Hey, I had the rental car ....
 
"This is a hell of a way to run a desert." A quote by our late governor Scott Matheson when sandbags were put up on both sides of a street running through Salt Lake City to form a river rushing through the city toward the Great Salt Lake several years ago. Utah has had torrential rains as well with parts of southern Utah experiencing severe flooding. It figures, I just got our sprinkler system fixed. :)
 
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