Words of Barrett

Be careful what you wish for.

Okay, I’ll admit that like many others, I’ve been whining about the drought. 212 days without appreciable precipitation is hard on a lady’s skin. With 90 degree temperatures, we have finally entered, what is known in New Mexico as, “Monsoon Season.”

I’ve always gotten a kick out of any notion of a monsoon in the arid desert climate of the southwest, but hey, I’m not the meteorologist.

Now, for the past couple of weeks, there have been afternoon storms that fly through the state. We are thrilled because that means the fire danger is reduced. ( Downside: the 156,000 acres of scorched land west of Santa Fe will now be an area that causes flooding.)

I live in the high desert east of Albuquerque and we often miss the storms for some odd reason. Last week we got a couple, and it was exciting enough for me to post comments on Facebook and even do a short video on the storm clouds.

( http://youtu.be/FuvdHjVZvas  )

This long diatribe leads up to last night. We had a humdinger of a thunderstorm. I’m not sure how much rain we got because after about 20 minutes, the power went out. That was somewhere around 8:30pm. Lawsey! Dramatic thunder and lightning that cycled, roughly, every 10 seconds. No kidding–bright flash, counting….then a sharp clap of thunder that rumbled for 10-15 seconds  (I know because I was counting one -one thousand, two one thousand) Hey, it was dark. I couldn’t read anymore because my eyes were blurred from reading all afternoon.

It was warm and humid so I stayed in the living room where there was a nice breeze.  I dozed in my recliner after reporting the outage to the electric company.

Finally at 11:30 pm, lights and fans went back on.

So, I won’t complain about lack of rain anymore but I’m tired today.