Our Very Unusual Midsummer’s Day

When it comes to weather, the Coachella Valley is a fragile flower. The summer is usually a relentless parade of hot, dry days. The residents and the land itself can’t take much deviation from the norm.

rose chriswell la quintaI worked today. Saturday is usually an off day for me, but we had active weather in Palm Springs.

Two lightning strikes this morning, one in Indio another in La Quinta, managed to ignite a few palm trees! Obviously, the lightning preceded the rain.

Last night a brief downburst caused a haboob, an airborne wall of sand which swept through the valley.

In the desert some people bring down the temperature with evaporative cooling, so called swamp coolers. They leverage the normally low humidity to make living indoors comfy. With dew points in the 60s and 70s, they were little help today.

We ended up with around 1/3″ of rain in Palm Springs. The old record has been smashed… and records have been kept here since the 1890s.

Another humid day with scattered showers follows. Long time California residents say they look forward to what everyone else considers bad weather. I suspect after today, the humidity and rain have lost their romance.

I’m writing this on my patio and it feels like I’m back on the East Coast. It’s that sticky. That’s really unusual.

2 thoughts on “Our Very Unusual Midsummer’s Day”

  1. I remember some pretty sticky and hot days up in Glendale. Especially when the apartment didn’t have a pool. I also do not thnk that we had AC—I used to go to a co-workers home to get cooled down.
    Last night’s (Friday) weather report showed the huge “ring of fire” regarding the huge area where it was going to be HOT and the channel 4 person stated that they would be seeing unusually high torrents of rain in So. Calif desert areas—so again, I was awaiting your blog to see how this panned out. We are having a fairly nice summer–hot days and cooler than normal nights. Tonight is sticky, so the AC is on.

  2. Barb:

    To be honest, I think we have it good in CT, we get those old fashioned hot and humid summer days when you feel like your in the Caribbean Islands – but you enjoy it cause you know it’s not going to last too long. Today most areas in the NY/NJ/CT area was in the upper 90’s and with the tropical dew points it must have been near 105 F. I actually loved it, I have not warn socks since May 15th – lol, with my patio palms and margarita I fell like I/m in the USVI – LOL,

    In a month or so, we’ll be back in the 60’s and 70’s with sunny and low humidity weather. So I enjoy it for what it is.

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