EMPS: A Blurred Distinction

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #102: It's All A Blur!, Carly wants to see something that's blurry or blurred - not by inept photography or due to limitations of a camera, but out in the world. Tricky, but I did come up with something.



It's been miserably humid today. The airport got 0.03" of rain last night, but I don't think that the thunder I heard for the second night in a row was followed by a drop of rain here. It was very hot and humid in the church this morning under my alb (a plain, white, long-sleeved vestment), and I was sweating and panting before the morning was over. Some of that moisture found its way onto my glasses, blurring my vision more than it is already.



Here's the main thing I want to show you. One common feature of the monsoon, as I mentioned Friday night, is the buildup of clouds over the mountains, which sometimes blurs the visual distinction between land and sky. How quickly can you spot the mountains in this picture?



That was a relatively easy one. There are times when clouds obscure the mountains entirely. Here's a slightly more extreme example from 2006.



Continuing my theme of weather-related blurring, here's a shot taking during a monsoon thunderstorm on July 31, 2007. I don't think I've driven in worse visibility than Southern California fog, but Florida storms are a close second, and Arizona ones, at their worst, aren't all that far behind Florida. And I love it. I am posting this particular shot for the first time; there are even more extreme ones from the same day that I've used before.



From the same day: I remember this moment. For once I actually sat in the parking lot at First Magnus, watching the temperature fall and waiting for the rain to ease off a little before driving away.

Karen

Gallivanting (in the rain)

The dogs are up for a drive to just about anywhere, rain or no rain.

From the Picasa album Tucson Rain, Floods and Washes 2009

Ack! I didn't post an entry yesterday, and now today's almost over as well! I have been taking a lot of pictures, though. Let's put a dent in the backlog! These are from Thursday, when it rained all day here, more than double the total rain that usually falls in the entire month of May. I took the dogs with me on a joy ride around town, checking for flooding. Results were mixed.

The nearest arroyo (wash) to Calle Mumble is the Alamo Wash, which crosses Calle Betelgeux next to the high school athletic field behind 22nd and Kolb. As I approach, it just looks like a few inches of water crossing a dip in the road. And on Thursday, the water really wasn't all that deep on the road itself.

But look to the right as you drive slowly through the water, heading east. There's a pretty little green river, brought into existence by a floodplain and a few days or rain. Trees grow along the arroyo, taking advantage of seasonal and unseasonal rain, and sending down a taproot into the aquifer below. The result is a riparian habitat, which supports a very different set of plants and animals than one finds in the surrounding desert. Keeping these areas from being destroyed by overpumping groundwater or constraining the water flow too much is an ongoing challenge, especially since the occasional flood can be very destructive to surrounding property. But this particular stretch of the Alamo Wash is pretty and peaceful, at least on the south side of Betelgeux.

From there we went to the Pantano River, also called Pantano Wash. Here the damage is done from the lowered water table. Water flows sometimes, but even the significant rainfall of Thursday and the days preceding it was insufficient to bring much more than a strip of dampness to the stretch of the river near 22nd St at Pantano Parkway.

After that we turned around and went in the other direction, all the way to the dog park. There was definitely flooding there. The dogs took it in stride, and Pepper in particular ended up with muddy paws.

When we left the dog park, I decided to go back to Alamo Wash for more pictures. This is the view looking north as one crosses the water, going east on Betelgeux. This is where shopping carts, recycle bins and other detritus sometimes wash up. It's also where kids occasionally hang out, on or under the little bridge.

Neighborhood flooding isn't confined to that one little strip of road. Here's some more, a block or two away.

A different stretch of Alamo Wash runs past the neighborhood park. The woman in the photo above is carrying the smaller of her two dogs past the stretch of flowing water.

Safely past the wash, the terrier resumes its walk.

And here is the stretch of Alamo Wash immediately south of where the terrier was carried. Tucson Clean and Beautiful is looking for someone to adopt each of these stretches of Alamo Wash, but I think overall they're in pretty good shape. At least, they were on Thursday!

Karen

Gallivanting, Part One

Grackles at one of the Reid Park waterfalls.

From Reid at Random

In recent days, Cayenne and Pepper have made it very clear that their beloved dog park is only part of what they want and expect from our daily outings together. Sometimes they head for the exit gate of Miko's Corner Playground after only 15 minutes or so, only to lead me away from the car, gallivanting across Reid Park as we've done so many times recently. Even on a leash, they seem to enjoy the chance to cross fields and sniff at trees and running water, encounter more humans and dogs, and be happily frustrated that I won't let them chase the ducks again.

The most interesting concert-goer, according to Pepper, had four legs.

Sunday evening, for example, the Tucson Pops had another concert in the park. I took the dogs to the back of the performance center long enough to hear their first selection, Peachtree Promenade, which I liked very much. Next to us, and elderly couple had their folding chairs and a blanket, and a ferret in a box. Pepper was extremely interested in the ferret, much to the amusement of the man, who held the ferret up in the air briefly for the dogs and me to see. When we left, Pepper didn't want to go. At the end of the five minute walk back to the car, Pepper tugged at the leash to go back to the dog park. I took them in and removed their leashes, and Pepper immediately headed for the opposite gate - the one that led back toward the ferret!

The open door has a lighting feature I didn't notice on a daylight visit.

But they mostly seem content to go where I want to go. I wanted another look at this sculpture, which I call Open Door. It has no identifying plaque, and is not mentioned online anywhere I've found other than this blog. Early in the week I noticed as I drove by at dusk that it has neon lights that come on at night. I didn't notice these the first time I photographed it. But when I went to take another look this week, I was sidetracked and missed the sculpture at first, and had to circle back around. The source of my distraction was a couple of young women who were allowing their dog to splash around in the feeder streams and ponds that lead to the southern duck pond. I warned them not to let their dog into the lake itself, because, as I discovered with Cayenne last week, it's full of smelly muck.

"Oh, this is, too," the young woman with the leash said. "I just give her a bath afterward." Uh, okay.

From Tucson Rain, Floods and Washes 2009

It's been raining all week here, which is unusual for Tucson in May. Thursday set two new records for the date, one for the lowest high temperature (68 degrees), one for the most rain (0.53 inch, which is more than double the average for the entire month of May). I have lots of pictures from Thursday afternoon, when I took the dogs gallivanting in the intermittent rain, and drove to places most likely to be flooded. But let's save those shots for the entry after next. Before that, I owe you a Weekend Assignment entry, but I've got to get some more sleep first.

Karen

Sparkling Water

Yes, it's Round Robin time again! This week's theme, "Sparkle," comes to us from Vicki, author of "Maracas." And yes, we're gearing up for a time of year full of sparkling tinsel, ribbons, champagne, lights and, if certain advertisers get their way, diamonds. But over the last few days, the only sparkling I've seen has come from a very different source. Let me show you.


See it? On the ground there, that purply pink light? That's the reflection of a street light in a couple of puddles. Yes, folks, it's raining in the Old Pueblo!



I had to really think about the word sparkle, what I think it means. I don't want to get pedantic about it and actually look up the word, but to me it means tiny, shiny bits of twinkling light. That's what I've been seeing over the last few days, drops of water lit up by headlights, streetlights and camera flashes. Kind of pretty, really, especially if one takes a moment to capture it digitally and present it.


Yes, I know I posted a shot of taillights near the power planet as recently as Monday night. But the rain adds a whole new sparking dimension to the scene.


A streetlight near my house illuminates the rain against the moody sky.

This was a line of approaching cars near the wash behind the high school. Can't really tell, can you?

I took other pictures for this, but I'm not quite satisfied with most of them. In some cases the sparkle was just too subtle for the camera to pick up, being either too small, too far or too poorly lit. One shot I tried for twice, unsuccessfully, was rain on Tuffy's head. Ah, well. Take my word for it, she was sparklingly wet!

Now go see the other Robins sparkle. And don't forget, you're also welcome to join in yourself! See the Round Robin blog for details.

Karen

Linking List

Vicki - Posted!
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Steven - Posted!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com

Julie - Posted!
Julie's Web Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Teena - Posted!
It's all about me!
http://purple4mee.blogspot.com/

The Lunchtime Commute as an Extreme Sport

A Message from Tuesday's Karen:
The way things are going at the moment, it's becoming clear that this entry, a photo essay, can't be completed tonight. You see, I did buy the SONY Vaio for $599.99, and it's currently copying files from my external hard drive. Guess where my edited photos for this entry are? You've got it - on my external hard drive! So I'm going to save this to draft, do a quick entry about the computer instead, and finish this Wednesday night. See you then!

Okay, it's Wednesday night and I've made much progress on setting up the VAIO. My Word docs and photos are on it now, I've installed Office 2003, PhotoStudio 5.5 and Firefox, and even managed to track down and copy in my AOL saved mail and such. At the moment it looks as though the only major casualties of changing computers are OmniPage SE (a free version of OCR software, but not Vista compatible), and the software that came with my current camera (I can't find the CD, but I didn't like it anyway). So. Time to double back and tell you folks about yesterday's storm.

Oh, I knew it was raining. How could I not? It was 2 PM Tuesday, and co-workers were congregated at that windows, looking out on the worst storm so far this year. I was reminded of a line from Arizona 101, a book we bought when we got to town 21 years ago: "When everyone rushes to the windows, it's raining." Yup!


I didn't have an umbrella with me, or a jacket, or a hat, but I went home for lunch anyway. Partly it was to eat a cheap lunch out of the freezer (got to economize to pay for this computer!), but mostly I wanted to experience the fully glory of the storm, even if it meant getting soaked! And I did. I was parked not only "beyond the berm," but in one of the furthest possible spaces, behind a different company's building - the best space available when I'd arrived at work, later than most people. It was raining hard and the parking lot was under several inches of water. I even saw a whirlpool over a storm drain beyond the berm. By the time I got to my car I was thoroughly soaked.

And this is what I saw when I got in - a windshield with darn near zero visibility, and a temperature reading about 20 degrees cooler than it had been 4 1/2 hours earlier.

Driving home was a real challenge, not just because of the flooding, but because the visibility was kind of poor. It wasn't the worst I've driven in, but it was the worst in AZ. The very worst was on a fogged-in freeway near Pomona, California. The second worst was driving the Bee Line between Orlando and Cape Canaveral in a torrential downpour, back when the Bee Line had hardly any exits, no shoulders, and alligator-infested canals on either side of the road.

To be honest, I should admit that I saw the road a little better than the camera did. This photo is unedited except for resizing and a "sharpen lightly."

It was still challenging driving, though, that stretch of three miles or so along Wilmot. And Calle Mumble was a lake again.

I got home safely, threw my shirt in the dryer and grabbed my jacket to wear on the return trip. By the time I went back to work, the storm was mostly over, but not the flooding.


When I left the office, the clouds were doing that cool thing they do over the slopes of the Catalinas. The roads were well on their way to being dry. I decided to drive over to the wash behind the high school, and see whether it was passable. It was.


And kids were hanging out in the wash itself.

My squelching shoes didn't dry until late in the evening, but the streets were almost dry at 8 PM when I drove across town to buy the laptop. Good thing, too!

Karen

When Floods Are Fun

Looking north on Wilmot. Where did the mountains go?

Floods can be horrible, destructive things. I know this. Even here in Tucson, people occasionally die in washes and rivers during flash floods. Sabino Canyon was massively damaged by flooding a year ago, with 70-year-old bridges destroyed. And let's not even talk about the flooding that comes with hurricanes.

Police direct traffic at Broadway and Wilmot

But the kind of flooding we've had in Tucson this weekend isn't one of those bad ones, at least, not as far as I know. We've have 1.55 inches of rain in the past 48 hours, but the worst thing I've seen happen because of it was the traffic lights out at Broadway and Wilmot.

A temporary "river" at St. Michael's waters the plants

As if in defiance of my entry of last night, today's weather did not follow the usual pattern of blue sky in the morning, a buildup of clouds and then rain in the late afternoon and evening. It rained at 6:30 AM or so, something I discovered when nervous Tuffy came into the bedroom and woke me up by standing on my hair. That rain stopped after a while, but started up again in the early afternoon, and ended about an hour before sunset.

I set out around 3 PM in the car, looking for things to photograph, but it was still raining, and so I didn't want to slog my way to the Pantano River on foot. So I headed out to 5th and Wilmot, and got a few pictures of the flooding at St. Michael's - always a good time.

This shot's for you, Becky. Drainage at St. Michael's.

I set out around 3 PM in the car, looking for things to photograph, but it was still raining, and so I didn't want to slog my way to the Pantano River on foot. So I headed out to 5th and Wilmot, and got a few pictures of the flooding at St. Michael's - always a good time. The parking lot at St. Michael's drains into some kind of sewer thing or drainage ditch, but it doesn't make much difference when it rains and inch and a half in two days!

Flooding at Fifth & Wilmot, near the Crosswalk of Death

See? There's serious flooding in the road and on the sidewalk, just steps away from that culvert, including a little bit of whitewater rapids.

"Safeway Pond"

One last picture for tonight. This has been at the edge of the Safeway shopping center for several days, I think. It really does look like a deliberate pond, kind of pretty and peaceful. If this were Manlius, it would be the right size for a skating rink. No chance of that here! But taking pictures of the monsoon is more fun than ice skating, anyway.

Karen

Gullywasher 2007

Flooding on Calle Mumble, 7/27/07

Oh, yes! We're having a good monsoon so far! We only have a couple of inches recorded at the airport for the 2007 monsoon since it started a couple of weeks ago, but that's almost as much as we got for the entire 2004 rainy season. Plus I think we've had more rain up and down my Wilmot stomping grounds than at the airport. Aside from plant debris and a few accidents I've seen no damage, just lots of dramatic rain to refill our chronically depleted aquifer.

One of the nice things about the Arizona monsoon is the timing of the storms. I've remarked before that it resembles the lyrics to the title song from Camelot, the bit about about it not raining until after sundown. Occasionally it rains as early as 2 PM or so, but usually it's 4 PM or later, sometimes as late as midnight. So today I was able to take the car for emissions testing at lunchtime, and not run into a drop of rain. That hit around 4 PM. By the time I drove home around 6:30 or 7 PM, there was one heavy squall for about a block, but the rain was mostly over with. While it was here though, it dumped a huge amount of water throughout my neighborhood, as I discovered when I tried to drive home with a "to go" order from Mama's Pizza.


This is a wash near Palo Verde High School. It crosses the main back street route between Kolb and Wilmot behind 22nd Street. In more than a decade of living in this neighborhood, I've seen this wash run with water a few times each summer, usually just a few inches deep in the street itself. With maybe one exception, I don't remember it ever being deep enough to turn me away from crossing it - until tonight. See that spot in the middle of the water there? That's a box or a tire or something, washing away.


I drove closer, not intending to cross, but just to take a better picture. Yes, this was swift and maybe a foot deep, a Stupid Motorists Law situation waiting to happen. See, every year, rescue services get called out to pull cars out of washes. The driver then gets hit with a bill for being rescued from the results of his or her stupidity. But the wash behind the Palo Verde football field is usually not more than three or four inches deep as it crosses Calle Betelgeux. No real danger in that. Tonight, though, I was one of a number of drivers who turned around and headed off another way.

The detour didn't help much. I soon came upon more flooding, and little choice but to cross it, unless I wanted to double back all the way to Kolb! Seeing that the motor home had already crossed, I chanced it. No problem.

Uh-oh. Trying to turn right after crossing the lesser flooding, I saw another part of the same wash that's behind Palo Verde. The motor home driver clearly had decided not to cross it. The vehicle on the other side of the wash turned around rather than driving through. The woman and the dog, well, they didn't seem too worried, but they didn't go wading, either.

So I backed up and drove on, trying to find another way through. I came across yet a third piece of that same wash, again impressively deep. In the end I had to double back all the way to Kolb Road, a mile east of Wilmot. There was no other way to reach Wilmot except via the main roads, either 22nd or Golf Links. I went with Golf Links.

And yes, in the end, John's pizza slice and I got home safely.

I love the monsoon!

Karen

NWS Monsoon Tracker - Rainfall

Current Conditions - Tucson Intl Airport

Before the Storm (and During, and After)

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a shot of something unusual on the street where you live. The challenge? It can't be a shot of something of yours. Which means you'll have to, you know, walk down the street a bit. The definition of "unusual" I leave to you. My only suggestion is that it should be in public view, unless you can convince a neighbor to let you in their house and take photographs of the freakish stuff they have there. And if you can, well. Good on you.

There's really only one thing on our street that I find particularly unusual, and it's not on our block. Here it is:


This old double decker tour bus obviously hasn't been used in years and years. The lettering on the words Tucson and Tour is the same style as the old Tucson Toros baseball team logo from the 1980s. I'm guessing this bus last carried tourists about 20 years ago.

Now, the rest of what I'm going to show you isn't as impressive as I'd hoped, but it is unusual for us. Exhibit A:


See all that dirt in the street? That is left over from flooding on Saturday night. According to a rain gauge at nearby St. Michael's, we got 1.25 inches of rain that night. Considering our annual rainfall is something like 11 inches, that's a lot!


This isn't technically my street, but I'm going to cheat a little and show it to you anyway. It's about two blocks behind our house. It's as close as I got to capturing a dust storm in progress at lunchtime today.


By the time I started back from lunch the dust storm had given way to rain, and the dirt and gravel in the street was weighted down by water.

And yes, okay, this is good old Wilmot. I don't technically live on Wilmot, but I practically do. I live half a block off it, spend my days driving on it and working on it and going to church on it. Besides, I love taking pictures of the clouds when they hang below the top of the Catalinas. And this shot even happens to have an old car in it.


On more Wilmot shot. I took this through a rainy windshield, but even so I'm not quite sure what that ring shape in the middle is. Pretty unusual, huh? Yeah, okay, I'm stretching a bit, but it's still pretty neat!

Karen

No Dust Devils, Darn It!

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Snap a picture of wind. Naturally, it's difficult to get a picture of the wind itself, being that air is generally transparent. however, it's easier to get a picture of how the wind is affecting other things: hair, flags, kites, so on and so forth.

I have no blowing hair pictures for you, no kites, and I choose not to go with flags. I actually did take a flag picture tonight, just as the wind dropped; but really, even though it was a bit windy after work there were no good photographic opportunities. So this is a survey of what's currently on my hard drive, cross-checked against past blog entries to avoid reruns. You won't be seeing the windblown Niagara Falls icicles again tonight unless you Google for them. Nothing I'm posting is less than 10 months old, nor more than 20 months old.

This first shot is pretty much a typical parking lot monsoon storm picture. Check out the palm trees in the middle; they'll tell you the wind's direction that afternoon.

And this one, obviously, is after a storm. It was wind, and not so much the rain, that brought down these palm branches and bits of bark.


This is from my favorite sequence of monsoon pictures ever, and the only halfway decent one in the series that I haven't posted at least once before. Check out the whitewater rapids in the street! St. Michael's, August, 2005.

This wash next to Fuddrucker's on Speedway is full of water, which is fairly unusual in itself. But what makes it interesting is the way the wind is blowing ripples on its surface.

And this is as close as I found to the traditional evidence of wind in Arizona: a dust devil. A dust devil is basically a mini whirlwind of dust or dirt, spiraling into the air. They turn up fairly often on the freeway between Tucson and Phoenix, but not usually close enough to be easily photographed. Here instead is a more generalized dust storm, covering a huge part of the north side of Tucson. June, 2006.

Best I can do for tonight. Tomorrow: my Round Robin Photo Challenges 2nd Anniversary entry! And no, I haven't a clue yet what I'll be posting for it. More fun for me that way!

Karen