A Taste of Hurricane

Who would have thought I'd be in a hurricane in the dessert?  Yessirree now I feel like I know exactly what those Florida and Texas people go through.  This was the worst storm I've ever been in and it was a little scary.

I was watching out the windows at the lightning.  It wasn't your ordinary strike to the ground.  It was literally constant flashing over the entire landscape, but up in the clouds, almost like a strobe light.

Pretty soon the wind came up, whipping my poor little palm tree like a step child.  It moved a good 24" back and forth.  The noise was deafening as it lashed across the top of the house, sounding like all the roofing was stripped in one fell swoop.

This is looking out my side window at my dawn to dusk light.  That's a combination of rain and water pouring off the roof of the garage.  

It got even worse with rain going sideways as the trees bent almost to the ground.  There were a couple of big lightning strikes, so of course I HAD to go out with my camera for some pictures.  I didn't get far.  There was a very close strike and the power went out, followed by the biggest boom I've ever heard.  YIKES!!

You can get a small idea here.  It was too dark to get good images, but there's an interesting flash if you watch this for a bit.

I haven't processed the camera images yet, but I know there are a couple of amazing shots of the clouds heading East.  It was moving very fast, thank goodness.

Yesterday morning I checked the place out for damage.  Good news, the roof is still intact.  Uh oh ... there's a pretty big washout at the corner of the driveway.  It's a good 4 feet wide, washing all that good sand and gravel down on the neighbor's property.  Guess I better get out my shovel.

By the way, see those railroad ties?  They magically appeared while I was gone.  I mentioned I would try to get some to keep me from backing over the cliff and POOF!!!  There they were, thanks to Mr. Chance.

Then I noticed THIS!  It's the drain at the end of the RV pad.  As you can see, sand and rocks plugged the drain, causing all that water to run over the side and make a really big hole.  

No worries about the washout, it's all fixable.  The good news was the rain lowered the temperature to a heavenly 75 degrees for the night.  Of course it didn't last, but it gave me time to adjust.  That and the twelve bottles of water I drank that afternoon.

I drove over to check out the Chance Ranch to find pieces of downspouts spread around the yard.  The fence top bird houses were laying on the ground, along with some wood that used to live in the back yard. Even a huge piece of 2 x 8 lumber (a trailer side rail) had been lifted off the rack and tossed on the nearly trailer.  Patty and I picked it all up, hoping the worst of the storms is over.  Probably not, but we can hope, right?

In the meantime, guess what happens when it rains a lot in the desert and floods all the little creepy crawly homes?  Oh yeah ..... they come up out of the ground.  

The forecast?  Cloudy, rainy and hold on to your hat windy.  I'll take that any time over blah California.