Tropical Rains

This past Monday, we had backwards weather. No, tornadoes didn’t drop houses from the sky. No, we had rain that moved from southeast to northwest, and fell straight down. For those of you my readers who live in places with normal weather, where rain falls instead of blowing, this would generate a shrug and a murmur of something along the lines of, “Well, of course it would rain on Monday.” Here, we call it passing strange.

The weather guessers had been wildly optimistic about our chances of rain. My rule of thumb is if the National Weather Service and local guys all call for more than 50% chance, we will get nothing, or at best two drops and a lick of lightning. They jinx it when they get so optimistic. So Sunday came and went with lovely clouds and three drops, more or less, and those well away from RedQuarters. Rain would have been nice, but it was cooler than the two previous days, and might be cooler yet on Monday. Coolth this time of year is something to be treasured, with or without rain. And the wheat farmers would prefer not to get rained on until harvest finishes.

(I should mention that I live in a heat island that kills rainstorms. From the time I moved here, everyone called it the “Vega Effect.” Storms made it as far east as Vega and collapsed, or divided, went around Bushland and Amarillo, then drenched the eastern half of the area. Or they got to the hospital on the north side of town and died. So not getting rain in town is not new.)

Monday morning came, and it was 59F out. I went for a lovely, cool stroll under cloudy skies – redhead weather indeed. The air had enough moisture to do something, but they were still calling for 90% chance. As I’d guessed, everything formed south and east of my corner of the world. No rain, sayonara, adios, bye. Except … When I looked at the radar again, the rain was coming from southeast to northwest. I rewound the radar and watched again. No, the weather was indeed moving backwards. In fact, most of the weather north of I-20 was moving east to west. What in the name of little green apples? Monday.

I was able to keep the house open all day, as cool as the day remained. It got up to 72 before the rain moved in. Slow, steady, vertical rain without any wind at all dropped straight down. It was heavy and steady, what we call a tropical rain, like they get on the Gulf Coast and places like that. The world stayed twilight grey, great napping weather if you don’t have things to do. I worked on writing and house stuff, and just watched it. Around four a break came, so I ventured out again and trotted a bit more. Chilly weather in June is too good to waste. More rain came, this with a little grumble of thunder but nothing impressive. Then we got a double rainbow at sunset, with lightning in the background.

RedQuarters ended up with an inch and a half. The canyon south and east of us got over three inches, one of those inches in fifteen minutes, leading to trail closures and some high-water removals from campgrounds. The river there is “flashy” in the extreme, going from dry to “Wasn’t there a water crossing sign there ten minutes ago?” in a quarter hour or so.

More rain came on Tuesday. It wasn’t as chilly, but still lovely, and very nice for June. The weather continued moving bass-akwards, thanks to a low-pressure system well to the south of the area. Thursday came before things reverted to regional normal.