Arizona Rainfall Total

There is a reason we live on a lake. It rains here, a lot. A whole lot. When we made the decision to move to the Northwest after our sixteen year Phoenix imprisonment, the choice was in part because we did not want to live with air conditioning eight months out of the year. But one of the deciding factors was that it is so green here. Green in so many shades and hues that for this desert rat it was an awakening. Water falling from the sky in great quantities has such a transforming affect upon the landscape and it was something outside of all of my other living experiences, even way beyond anything I experienced on the Gulf Coast. There are so many lakes, streams and rivers here that no single map of Oregon adequately shows all of the water flowing across the landscape. When I have been by any of our local rivers, fishing or just observing, I usually think of the dessicated surface of Arizona and how nature distributes its largess so unevenly. The normal daily flow of the Columbia River is almost identical to the flow volume of the Salt River through Phoenix during a 100 year flood event - about 200,000 cubic feet per second. Of course the drainage areas are not comparable, but that is in part due to the great water flow itself cutting into the land and capturing its territory.

I started out this post preparing to just report to my Arizona cousin that we have had 6.53 inches of rain since Halloween and that the timing of the recent visit could not have been better. That amount of rain is only about an inch shy of the average annual rainfall for Phoenix, if my memory is still functioning. I have been constructing a fireplace in our living room and one of the only items that is outside of my ability is the connection of the chimney to the existing roof, which happens to be some sort of petrochemical membrane that requires a hot glue and completely dry surface to bond the parts together. At the present rate of precipitation it may be next June before the fireplace is usable because we will not be able to complete the chimney hook-up.

Last night Julie and I were watching yet another post mortem on the election when a sudden, loud sound made us both jump up, wondering what sort of container had fallen from one of the kitchen shelves, shattering on the floor. It sounded like a 20 pound glass jar of dry macaroni breaking. It turned out that the plastic trash bag temporarily covering the cap-less chimney had reached its elastic limit. Apparently, a Glad 55 gallon yard debris bags, stretched tightly over a 10.5 inch diameter opening can only hold about a gallon of water before the pull of gravity exceeds the strength of the molecular bonds of the thin plastic. In an instantaneous dump water going down a metal chimney sounds amazingly like dry macaroni hitting the floor. I learn something new every day.

Again, this rambling is entirely within the limits I set for myself with this blog. Almost nothing is off limits, as long as my granddaughter may view it, and switching directions is encouraged.