two inches of rain over four days
Posted by Zonie on March 15, 2020 at 03:29:28
Tuesday evening through Friday evening we had quite a showery period in Phoenix. The rain totaled about two inches. What was extra nice was that it wasn't cold. The temperature was mostly in the lower 60s. In the mornings before work, I could comfortably work shirtless pulling weeds in the rain.
Friday was the most vivid day of the depression. There was a mix of sunshine and shower. As I was driving to work, I saw a cumulonimbus cloud to the east with a strange column-like feature extending from the base to the ground. It was too narrow and distinct to be a rain shaft, and it occurred to me that I might be looking at a tornado. I had to keep my eyes on the road, but I was less than two minutes from work, so I figured I'd examine the feature in more detail once I arrived.
When I found a spot where a building didn't get in the way, it was clear that the feature wasn't rotating. As had been drummed into our heads repeatedly in Skywarn class, "If it isn't rotating, it's not a tornado." Thus I didn't report the feature to the National Weather Service spotters line, lest I alarm the public needlessly (and there's been quite enough of that of late).
It clicked in my mind later that it might have been a hail shaft, though I've never seen one of those before. I sent an e-mail to the Skywarn coordinator asking about that possibility. Not everything I saw was ominous, and in the late afternoon there was a vivid double rainbow that lasted nearly half an hour.
Furnace work was slow, so I got to go out several times and pull weeds in the rain and mud.
Today the rain was gone and it was partly cloudy, and I went to the Reach 11 Recreation area to play in the mud. Besides producing a lot of wildflowers and insects, two inches of rain produced a lot of mud puddles.
This time I didn't wait long to get plastered. I was wearing overalls, a tan cotton shirt, wellies and a ball cap. I churned up some thick mud with my boots and slid down on my backside, slopping it over me with my hand and then rolling over into it. I got up with the heavy mud all over me, trudged to a nearby puddle that was higher in elevation and used my boot heels to dig a drainage, making the mud thinner. I then slid into that.
I then trudged around pleasantly cool with all the wet mud in my clothes and went exploring for other mud holes. I found one at the end of a long chain of connected mud holes that was blocked from draining. I churned it up to knee deep and then sat in it and reclined, floating in the mud. I kicked the sides and expanded the puddle with my boots. Then I found out where there was a relatively thin berm, and I stomped it down into the puddle, allowing the connected puddles to start draining into the nearby arroyo.
I encountered several other people out there. None of them were trying to get muddy, and none of them said anything to me. The service road to the equestrian center was open, but no event was going on there. I did see a few people using earthmoving equipment there, but it wasn't obvious what they were trying to do.
As the sun was getting lower in the western sky, I decided it was time to field bathe and head back. I found a nice relatively clean sun-warmed puddle for that, sat down in it and started washing off the mud. As I was doing this a song was going through my head. I wished I had remembered it back when there was a request for songs about getting wet. This was a natural tune for field bathing. It was "Rubber Duckie" from Sesame Street, sung by Ernie the Muppet (Jim Henson, I assume). I got quite a lot of the mud out of my clothing in that puddle, and I walked back to my car looking soaked and somewhat dirty but not mud plastered.
- Re: two inches of rain over four days Robin 17:05:41 3/29/2020
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- Re: two inches of rain over four days Zonie 00:51:39 3/30/2020
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- Re: two inches of rain over four days Zonie 00:51:39 3/30/2020
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