Pueblog USa
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Weathering the Phenomena
Phoenix gets ‘rain’!
According to the Phoenix Weather Channel, Phoenix has broken it’s historic 143-day dry spell. Now, according to the weather radar, it’s finally raining in their downtown area.
This might not impress many people who think of the fact that Phoenix is pretty much in a great big desert. However, it’s interesting that this particular event correlates with the latest Master Gardener’s course presentation involving trees.
It seems that trees are something of an ‘endangered species’ in the Phoenix area. It’s costing too much in terms of water to irrigate them, seems to be the primary reason. Therefore, fewer people are planting them and many others are dying off because of a lack of necessary water. Therefore, all the concrete and asphalt sucks up the heat of the sun and downtown has turned into its very own geothermal obstacle. So much so that the instructor from CSU pointed out that the rain clouds that might normally pass over downtown NOW are split by the thermal column over that area and going around it.
I guess today’s water-laden front was so large it had nowhere else to do, but over the downtown area.
I find it particularly interesting that the most intense rainfall, according to the radar image I just saw, the bright red image of the Map In Motion, was heading right for Phoenix and then side-stepped it to the east, only to re-intensify on the other side of the downtown area.
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