The 2014 monsoon rains

We had a very wet summer in the Sonoran Desert. It was the seventh wettest monsoon season since records have been kept. People that have lived here for 30 years says it the most rain they've ever seen. All those storms mean that there were some great photo opportunities, and on a couple of occasions I was even in the right place at the right time, and even had my camera with me.

A storm moved in while I was in Bulldog Canyon. I thought I had heard a screaming animal out there a couple of days before and had returned to find the body (but the only body I found was a dead saguaro). I have since decided that somebody is hunting mountain lions out there.

Great clouds mean some great sunsets.

I was out in the middle of a relatively flat area south of Florence Junction when I took this. You can see dust being kicked up on the left of the photo and a column of rain on the right.

This looked really ominous. I was worried I might be trapped in mud so I hurried to pavement. Turns out the rain never got to where I had been.

I stopped to get a picture of the rain falling on the Superstition Mountains and accidentally got a lightning bolt.

There was a great sunset going on at the same time in the other direction. I kept going back and forth across the road to get pictures of both.

It looks like it's probably raining pretty hard over there.

I hung around after sunset to get some lightning pictures.

This is a normally dry wash a couple of miles east of Tortilla Flat. There were some small waterfalls there but my pictures of them weren't any good. I decided I need to get an ND filter.

Yes, all the storms were great for pictures, but there were a couple of drawbacks, too. On several occasions I gave up on taking pictures because the bugs were so bad. Mostly they were gnats but once when I was on top of Lone Mountain some termites chased me away. Termites often swarm during the monsoon rains. Thousands of winged termites leave the colony to start new colonies. They have no interest in people but when there are so many in the air at once, the can't help landing on you. After a while it's just too creepy with all those bugs in your shirt (they always seem to fall into my shirt).

Just about every day, everywhere I went, there were nice clouds. This was taken northeast of Roosevelt Lake.

The other drawback to all the rain was, of course, the humidity. I decided to get serious about losing some weight this year and was frequently climbing Lone Mountain to burn some calories. The sweat dripping off my face created my own little salty rainstorm. It was a pretty mild summer temperature wise, though. There was only about one week when it got over 110. The humidity hung around long after the storms left. It was only during the past week that it seemed to return to normal. (I noticed because my knuckles cracked and bled when I made a fist.)

Winged termites leaving the nest. Photo taken on top of Lone Mountain.

I took a lot of pictures of Four Peaks from the top of Lone Mountain during the summer.

There were more flowers than usual during the summer.

One day I thought I was going to hike out to Apache Leap, east of Superior. There were storm clouds building over the valley but I didn't think they would affect me. Fortunately, I had forgotten where the trail was and wimped out because of the humidity. A very heavy storm moved through shortly after I got back on the pavement.

Even when it din't rain, there were nice clouds around. In order to keep burning calories, I was out hiking and getting pictures several times a week.

One day I tried to drive out to White Canyon Wilderness, south of Superior. The road seemed to be badly eroded by water, but the ocotillos didn't have leaves, and the ground was dry. Seemed very strange. Couldn't get to the wilderness so I went over to the Ray mine for a look and got a picture of this storm building. It evaporated shortly after I took this.

There are horses running loose around the Salt River. I suspect they were set free there by people that couldn't afford them any more when the economy took a dive. Anyway, I see their tracks all over the place but usually only see them at the river. I was wandering around Bulldog Canyon one day, a mile from the river, and came across 3 horses. Wouldn't wild horses run away from a human? These kept an eye on me but went about their usual business.

I climbed a tall butte near canyon lake. There were nice fluffy clouds all around. From on top you can see the Superstition Mountains, Four Peaks, Saguaro Lake, Canyon Lake, and lots of other landmarks. I got a nice 360 panorama. It's on my Panoramio page.

The only waterfall I've seen since I got the ND filter is by our pool.

I've come across several things I wanted to write a blog about over the past few weeks but didn't have time with all the hiking and picture processing. Maybe I'll catch up now that the sun sets so early.

Bullseye

Sometimes I use Google Earth to zoom in on parts of the desert that look like they are probably boring and search around for something interesting. I was doing that a few months ago and found what looked like concentric circles carved into the desert floor. They were faded and barely visible. They were much too circular to have been made by yahoos on ATVs. The outer-most circle is about 0.2 mile in diameter.

Screenshot of Google Earth showing the concentric circles.

Of course, the reason for looking for something like that is so I can go investigate. I went out there the first time on a day that it was too hot to do any climbing. It was almost too hot to walk around on mostly level ground. The temperature was only about 102 when I started out, and it was close to sunset, but I had to drink a lot of water. I misread my GPS receiver and thought I was only half a mile from the center of the circles when I started out. Actually, I was almost 2 miles away. It was close to sunset when I realized my mistake. I was only 0.2 mile from the center then but I figured it could be difficult to find the truck in that flat, featureless area in the dark so I turned back.

I went by a saguaro with a beehive in it.

A droopy saguaro skeleton. Picture taken well after sunset.

I went back about a week later. I went a little earlier and it was cooler and I had a plan for getting closer to the circles before I got out of the truck. It's monsoon season, though. There were some large clouds growing east of my destination. I kept going even though I might not get to the circles again. It would be cool to be in a rainstorm.

Look at the dark wall of rainfall behind this saguaro.

After a while it looked like it was going to rain where I was and since getting there involved driving several miles on dirt roads and because I didn't want to be stuck in mud out there, I turned around when I was about 0.2 mile from the center, again. I could see rain falling on the Superstition Mountains on the way back and stopped with a view of those mountains as the sun set.

The rainbow barely shows up, but I accidentally caught a lightning bolt.

I was there for about 30 minutes getting pictures of the storm and the sunset in the other direction.

It was a very pretty sunset.

The storm was awesome, too.

There was even lightning.

The very next day I made my third attempt to get to the circles. As I walked toward the center of the circles, I imagined that maybe it was some sort of ancient American Indian site, used for astronomy and to predict when crops should be sown or harvested and other such things. The American equivalent of Stonehenge. I would be famous for discovering it.

At 0.1 mile from the center, I saw a couple of pieces of metal and wondered what some cowboys had disposed of out there. I took a few steps and saw some more. Then more and more and more. There were pieces of metal all over the place. Many of the pieces were repeated. Lots of 3 inch pieces of pipe with a nut on one end. Lots of U shaped rods. Lots of sheet metal that looked like it had been formed into a cylinder and then smashed into the ground at high speed. Hmm.

Well, you get the idea. Anyway, after looking at dozens of pieces and remembering that that area is sometimes used by the National Guard for practice, I realized that the circles were a target and all the metal was pieces of practice bombs. For several reasons that I won't get into here, I concluded that the practice bombs didn't contain explosives. Then I proceeded to touch or move nothing, just in case my conclusion was wrong. I walked around gingerly for a little while looking for the circles but couldn't see them from the ground. It was a while before I noticed something a little unusual about the target area.

What's missing from this picture of the Sonoran desert?

What do you not see in this picture, either?

Give up? There are no saguaros. They are everywhere else out there, but I could only find one within the target area. I wonder if they were removed before the target was put there or if they were wiped out by target practice. The other plants there could survive damage or re-populate the area in a few decades. It could be a couple of hundred years before there are many saguaros there, though.

There are lots of pictures if you want to look at them all.

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Random rambling

One day last week I went out to the spot off Meridian road where I frequently go to take pictures of sunsets. I was there a little early so I was wandering around looking for pieces of RC planes (there's an RC airfield nearby). Anyway, I got a picture of this.

Crepuscular anti-ray?

Now you can Google crepuscular ray and you will find something like this. There's one key difference, though. The "ray" part refers to a ray of light. This picture shows a ray of shadow. Therefore it must be a crepuscular anti-ray. It can't be an anti-crepuscular ray because that is what's shown in the next picture. Sort of.

Anti-crepuscular anti-ray?

If you Google anti-crepuscular ray, you will see that it's crepuscular rays on the side of the sky opposite the sun that seem to converge towards a point at the horizon. Again, I have a picture of a shadow, so it must be an anti-crepuscular anti-ray.

I also got a picture of the moon.

... and some red clouds.

I only wandered a short distance that day, and it was late, and the ground was mostly level, but I got very wet. The humidity is way up because it's that time of year.

I went out there again another day and got another crepuscular anti-ray picture. Then, on my way home, I went by this place at Meridian and Brown road where I always think think I'll stop and get pictures of kids riding horses and decided that it was time to actually stop.

Another crepuscular anti-ray.

I don't know anything about riding horses. I think they were barrel racing or something like that. I tried taking pictures but it was too dark for pictures of movement.

This didn't turn out too bad. Most were very blurred.

I took pictures of this horse because it looked worried. It later convinced me that I should probably leave before I got hurt.

A few days later, I needed to get out and climb something, so I went to a small mesa at the corner of Usery Pass road and Bush Highway. I thought I might be able to get some sunset pictures from there, and the sun and clouds cooperated.

I like the way the clouds look.

In the other direction was a small storm, with lightning. It convinced me that I should get off that mesa.

One day, I got home from work and there was an amazing cloud on the other side of the Superstition Mountains, so I went to get a picture of it. Of course, I had to be in the right setting. I didn't want houses or cars or power lines in the picture. By the time I got to the right place, the cloud was gone. However, another popped up and I like the pictures I got of it.

A nice storm cloud.

I saw some great lightning on the way home, and it was getting dark enough to take pictures of it, so I stopped on the Meridian road overpass. I took about 70 pictures. About 10 had lightning in them. About 4 looked halfway decent.

Twin lightning bolts.

Then, this past weekend, Sweetums and I made our annual summer trip to the top of Mt Lemmon. I think it was only about 95 when we started up the mountain road. It was about 63 near the top in Summerhaven, which feels very nice after a couple of months of 100+ temperatures.

There were some nice clouds around on the way up. It's dark and raining to the left.

I seem to get pictures of the same stuff every time I'm up there.

When we started back down, I saw some clouds draped over parts of the mountain up ahead and pulled off the road to get pictures. By the time I got out of the truck, though, we were in the cloud. I waited a few minutes, but it was just getting thicker, so I continued on the way down. For a while, I could only see about a hundred feet ahead, so I was going slow. I kept having to pull over to let people by that were in a hurry. I don't know why there aren't a bunch of wrecks on that mountain. The visibility got down to about 20 feet before it started to lift. That was scary.

We got out of the clouds just before Windy Point and the rest of the drive down the mountain was uneventful. We ate in Tucson and on the way back to Phoenix, it seemed like there was lightning all around. Then it rained. It was the hardest rain I've seen since moving to Arizona 10 years ago. It rained for a long time like that. I expected it to be about 100 when we got back to Phoenix but it was still in the 70's. Seems there had been some showers there, too. I saw something that evening that I have never seen in Arizona before; a frog hopping along the road. I saw two of them. Unprecedented. You know it was wet.

Taken at Windy Point.

It was much cooler than usual the next day in the Phoenix area. It rained a little, and in the afternoon I thought I should drive out to Tortilla Flat to see if Tortilla Creek was flowing across the road. I didn't even get as far as the Ghost Town on Apache Trail, though. It must have rained very hard in the Superstition Mountains. Weekes Wash was a raging torrent.

Weekes Wash. Never imagined it could look like this. It had dropped about 2 feet by the time I got there.

Well, I'm not caught up yet, but dinner's ready. More later.

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