Gifts of the Monsoon Season in Arizona

Monsoon season in southern Arizona brings the most appreciated gift of rain, providing temporary respite from the searing summer heat.  But the rain also brings with it many secondary gifts, like breathtaking monsoon sunsets...

and rain-coaxed blooms...

and others, a little more rare and surprising, as you will see at the end of this post.  

After two nights and one afternoon of rain last week, the local Texas Sage decided to make a showy debut with its vibrant purple blossoms.  I captured the blooms' progression over three days with my iPhone.  One bush was just beginning to show blooms on August 31:

Here is the same bush the next day:

And here is the bush on September 2, 2012:

Aren't those blooms amazing?  They bring a smile to my face each time I pull into my driveway.  But the delightful, unexpected monsoon gift was the rare discovery of this Sonoran Desert Toad this afternoon:

Because they usually only emerge during the monsoon season after rain to mate and lay eggs in puddles, people could go a lifetime without seeing one of these, especially those people living in more developed areas. This is the first Sonoran Desert Toad I've ever seen, and I've lived here 17 years.  My daughter rescued it from a swimming pool, we created a little puddle with peat moss for it and hope it will go about its business happily in our back yard.  My children wanted to keep it as a pet, but a little research revealed it is poisonous, so outside it will stay.

As we enjoy a relaxing Labor Day weekend, we will treasure these amazing monsoon gifts of the desert, and will continue to treasure them, right until they dry up, fall down or hop away. 

Saguaro Against the Sky

Most nights after feeding our miniature horses, I perch on a hill behind our courtyard wall to view the sunset.  If I aim my camera just above the wall, I get a spectacular image of my favorite giant saguaro against the evening sky.  I took these photos recently on three different August evenings.

I treasure every saguaro in our yard, their presence one of the main reasons we bought our home.  After living in north central Phoenix for several years, where palm trees and citrus dominate the landscape, I was excited to move a little farther out and experience more of Arizona's native plant life.  

Saguaros are found only in the Sonoran Desert.  These slow-growing cacti do not grow an arm until they are at least fifty years old.  For more interesting saguaro facts, visit the National Park Service website:  http://www.nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/upload/the%20saguaro%20cactus.pdf  

Considering the size and arms on my favorite saguaro, it has seen its share of August sunsets.  I like to imagine the people who might have passed by this saguaro over the years.  A vivid picture comes to mind of a dusty cowboy circa 1912, laying on the ground beneath her arms, staring up at the glittering stars as he falls asleep on a hot August night.  

Wait Until the Haboob Settles

You've heard the metaphor “wait until the dust settles.”  A few nights ago I found out just how long it can take for dust to settle, and word to the wise, the more dust, the longer it takes.

Following a winter and spring of very little rain, strong monsoon winds have been whipping the Sonoran Desert into a frenzy, creating enormous clouds of dust that move swiftly and choke and coat everything in their path. 

While these Arizona dust storms used to be referred to simply as “dust storms,” in recent years I have noticed news sources referring to them using the Arabic word, “haboob.” 

“Haboob” may be a funny sounding word, but there is nothing funny about them.  OxfordDictionaries.com defines “haboob” as a “violent and oppressive wind blowing in the summer, especially in the Sudan, bringing sand from the desert.”  (Someone should notify Oxford Dictionaries the Arabic word has spread to the Sonoran.) 

For more detailed information about haboobs, you can find several YouTube videos and websites that depict and describe them, such as this one: http://earthsky.org/earth/amazing-video-and-pictures-of-arizona-dust-storms.

Now, back to my own recent haboob encounter. 

We had just eaten, used the bathroom, and filled our gas tank. I was thankful for this when the haboob crossed our path on I-8 as we made our way home from San Diego to Phoenix.

From a distance it was difficult to tell its expanse. My husband and I debated whether to pull off the road and wait for it to pass (not knowing how long that would take) or head toward it and hope for the best.  Our last stop had been an hour before, and we now faced an open expanse of desert with no immediate exit in sight.  With three kids in the car logging nearly four hours of car-riding crankiness, it was tempting just to keep going.  

My husband drove toward the cloud of dust, getting as close as he could with clear visibility.  Meanwhile, I madly searched my Twitter feed for information about the dust storm's size and direction. The weather service issued a dust storm warning until 6:00 p.m., yet here we were, at 7:00 p.m. facing it.  Was it dissipating, then?  The information was vague.

What we knew was what we saw - and that was a massive wall of dust we were about to hit. 

We cautiously entered into it to determine visibility.  Right away we could see the cars in front of us disappear dangerously into the dust not more than a few feet ahead. My husband, a personal injury lawyer who has first-hand knowledge of the danger of driving in a dust storm, knew what we had to do.  Suddenly, putting up with the cranky kids on the side of the road didn't sound too bad.

We pulled off the highway, turned off the car and lights, and began to wait it out. 

The wind whipped and whistled over us and a thick cloud of reddish brown dust encompassed our car, blocking out the normal earthly views of the desert, as if a spaceship had picked us up and plopped us down on Mars.

Since my own Twitter quest for information had come up vague and limited, I tweeted my photo “Inside the dust storm on highway 8 right now #haboob @ArizonaDOT @azcentral” in an attempt to give others an idea of what they or their loved ones might be in for if traveling that way. 

Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) promptly replied, “You are in a good place to stop.  Be safe…” confirming that we had made the right decision to pull over.  (For more information about dust storm safety, ADOT’s  “Safety in a Storm” page can be found here: http://www.azdot.gov/ccpartnerships/haboob/safety.asp as well as www.pullasidestayalive.org.)

The kids were both frightened and exhilarated by the experience.  I thank God they were old enough to communicate about what was happening so we could calm their fears, and we were not trapped in the car with an infant or toddler.  I was further triumphant in knowing all of my kids had recently used the bathroom.  The woman in the car in front of us did not appear to be so lucky.  We watched her brave the dust to carry her child into the desert, shielding her child’s anguished face and eyes along the way, and disappear behind a bush. 

Even with our minor victories, the wait seemed endless.  In the end, we waited just under an hour, only rejoining the highway when the dust morphed from evil red to smoky gray with several feet of visibility in front of us.  Luckily the storm headed south while we drove east.  We made it home safely.  I tweeted my thanks to ADOT for caring.

If this haboob was blown my family's way to teach a life lesson in patience, then this story will serve as our reminder to pause in the face of life’s haboobs, determine the quantity of metaphoric dust, then let it settle long enough for the path to become clear.  Sometimes life gets uncomfortable, but in the end, the storm passes.