40 days and 40 nights

Maybe the next boat I get should be an ark – can I use fiberglass instead of gopher wood?

A few days ago, the northern end of Rio Arriba County hit a milestone. It has rained, at least a little bit and often a whole lot, every day for 40 days and 40 nights. Actually, we’re now moving in on 50, but the real important milestone, at least literarily, is that 40 day mark. Yeah, we’ve had breaks in the weather, especially in the mornings, but every single day, it has rained.

At least Five O’Clock Somewhere is situated on a rocky hillside, so any runoff rushes past. We’re not in danger of flooding here. But elsewhere in New Mexico and West Texas, the story is much direr. Some neighborhoods in Albuquerque have been flooded, and parts of Socorro, and much of Rio Rancho, and a lot of Corrales, and some of Placitas, and low-lying areas of Las Cruces, and some of Roswell, and the entire village of Hatch (although, fortunately, not many of the chile fields). El Paso, in the span of 10 days, got more than twice that city’s annual average rainfall; Zorro’s house had minor damage, and some of his friends took major hits.

The good news about all of this is that this huge amount of rainfall translates into more water going into the lakes, and also less demand by farmers for irrigation water coming out of the lakes. Elephant Butte has considerably more water in it that was originally predicted (see Desert Sea for details), and Heron’s doing all right, too.

The weather here currently: It’s been raining steadily for about the past six hours but is letting up now; we had about an hour of spectacular lightning and thunder four hours ago. There was only a brief power outage toward the beginning of the storm.

No rainbow today; those happen only when the storm breaks up before sunset.