Tuesday, September 9, 2014

The Weather in Arizona

I don't say much about our Arizona weather here on my blog other than to complain about the heat from time to time, but today I have some photos of something out of the ordinary for us. You may have heard about the excessive rain we had yesterday in the Phoenix metropolitan area.


A very loud thunderstorm woke us in the early hours yesterday morning (around 2:30 a.m.) and kept us awake for a good part of the night - super loud thunder and a steady downpour of rain. We learned later that it was the end result of a hurricane that had formed in the Pacific ocean, dropping 3.29 inches of rain on us yesterday. Now that might not seem like a whole lot, but that's more rain than we typically get during the months of July, August and September combined! And since we live in a desert, we don't really have gutter systems to drain the water away and out of neighborhoods quickly. The photos above and below were taken from our driveway yesterday morning as we prepared to leave our house for work.
 


I was going to slant this blog post by saying it wasn't all that bad. The media really hypes up the news anytime we get even the slightest amount of rain. But the truth is that some parts of the valley retained more water than on our side of town. My brother, who lives on the west side of town, suffered serious damage to his car and tires while driving through a flooded intersection in the early hours of the day. Lots of roads were closed, including one of our major interstates. {You can watch a brief news report here.}

It made for an interesting drive to work yesterday morning, and some people were even forced to stay home for the day. But by time we drove home from work yesterday afternoon, things looked a bit like this, with outer lanes still flooded and sidewalk edges not visible:

And here's our street view when we got home:



A few of my blog readers reached out to me yesterday to make sure we were ok - so sweet of you guys! That prompted me sharing these photos today to let you know that the sun is shining in Arizona today, and I'll probably be complaining about the heat and humidity later this afternoon. Some parts of the valley still have standing water and some folks have some serious property damage to deal with, but we were very fortunate in our part of town.
 
To my far away friends: Thanks for thinking of us yesterday!
To my local friends: How did you weather the storm?

11 comments:

Susi said...

Happy to hear you weathered the storm and arrived to your destinations safe.

debs14 said...

What a surprise all the rain must have been. What's next? Snow?
Pleased it dried up fairly quickly and no damage was done.

Ruth said...

Goodness me, that was some rain! So glad that you weren't adversely affected by it.

Anonymous said...

Glad you were all ok and my oh my what a storm you had.

Karen said...

It's amazing how quickly it disappeared! Glad you didn't have any damage.

alexa said...

Good to see it didn't last very long for you all - that ground must be thirsty!

scrappyjacky said...

Glad to hear it dried up fast....and you didn't suffer any damage.

Carola Bartz said...

I read about it in our paper today and saw some images from the Tucson area that looked pretty bad. 3.29 inches of rain would be heaven to us 0 everything is bone dry here, and I'm not even sure the ground could soak up all of that water so suddenly. Anyway, I'm glad that you're okay - your street actually looks lovely.

Miriam said...

Happy to know that you were OK but what a shock for you! We expect it here!

Sian said...

Your rain made it onto our news here! It's going to be interesting to see what effect that extra water has on your plants now. Maybe you'll get some extra greenery? I'm glad everyone was safe

Audrey said...

Wow Deb, that is crazy!!! I've been so busy that I hadn't even heard about the rain in Arizona. Talk about living under a rock! Glad all is okay. Hope you have a beautiful weekend! XOXO

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