The Monsoon Season

Today was pretty good -- better than most in the last week or so. I even dealt with the IRS mess and came out feeling okay. Well, I was a bit surprised. After being on hold for most of the afternoon ("Your call is very important to us" -- ah, right), the IRS dude was friendly, helpful, and everything seems resolved. We still owe money, but in theory the letters should stop (they admitted one was a mistake) and I'm not longer afraid that I'll wake up one morning with IRS agents standing over my bed!!!

Anyway, I did get some art done, despite the IRS and the monsoon.

Monsoon??? Yes, monsoon. Or rather the beginning of the monsoon season. And yes I still live in the desert. The monsoon season is the part of summer when high pressure systems stall out over southern California and this brings up hot, humid air from the Gulf of Baja (or even the Gulf of Mexico on occassion). This humid air meets the mountains and dry air and in theory we get rain. In practical terms, Arizona usually gets more rain than we do here. And Joshua Tree, CA (about 20 miles east of here) gets more rain than we do here in Flamingo Heights. But we still get the lightning and power outages!

The first couple of years we lived hear, there were no monsoon seasons. This year, we are getting extra humidity for some reason, so we might actually get rain. So far it's only been humidity which is not fun when it's 106 degrees out. Today, we had clouds and lightning (with power interruptions), plus I could see the rain over yonder.



The above picture is the beginning of the clouds coming over the mesas and hills to the west. The funny looking tree is a Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia). There's also the dead rose bushes (in the foreground), creosote, cholla cactus, and my jujuba tree. (Not a bad photo considering it was taken with my camera phone!)