Special update

14 07 2021

This screen capture from my Kindle showing the rain all over our wonderful (and parched) Southwest Colorado region stands alone and is worthy in itself of relief and rejoicing. 🙂 But, even as the post immediately below this one claimed to be updated as to the new catchment project, as of Monday afternoon (I drafted and scheduled it on Sunday), it was already outdated again. 🙂

So – spoiler alert – Garth Nelson and Jim Cisco came Monday and installed the gutter pieces all across the front of the new catchment and installed pipes to three of the four tanks, AND tested it with 200 gallons of water pumped up and sprayed over the roof (which now covers more than half the structure). Daniel Chavez and his wife, Destiny, had their baby (!), and Mike Jensen is engaged in less interesting but also important office work, and Garth wanted to get the gutter in place to start catching water and storing it before he heads north for a couple of weeks on a fire detail. … !!! Can you say perfect timing?!

So this morning, when I awoke to the musical and wonderful and what-the-heck-is-that-strange-noise sound of rain on my firewood box roof (also propanel, interestingly enough), I. Was. STOKED! 🙂 I’ve already cried to see the water flowing into the gutter from the water Garth and Jim sprayed up on the roof – and you’ll see it, too, when I can get the post composed – and this … well, let me just say there might have been some more moisture this morning, flowing inside the house. 🙂

Huge thanks again to all our BLM folks, for the roles they’ve played in every step of this process … to catch rainwater for our mustangs. 🙂 And thanks, of course, to Mother Nature, for the RAIN. Such a blessed relief!

(P.S. Spring Creek Basin is a bit eastish of the pin in the map above. And at 7:38 a.m. Colorado time, the sprinkles are only now slowing. It’s been raining since well before light.)





We. Have. PONDS!

31 08 2020

Storm helps illustrate the fact that at least three ponds in Spring Creek Basin now have water for the first time in months (and months and months). A very small portion of the pond behind him is reflecting the fiery sky, but the pond is much larger than that little reflection point.

Saturday’s drenching didn’t cover all of Spring Creek Basin, but it hit a good portion of the eastern region, from the east pocket in the north to the southern tip.

At least four bands are taking advantage of two of the ponds, and I’m pretty sure a fourth pond also has water. … I ran out of time to hike back to check it because I was having too much fun hanging out with ponies – and that was before the giant, heart-leaping thrill when I saw the first of the three ponds with water. (I might have yelled and screamed and hollered really, really loudly.)

Thanks to all for your hopes, prayers, wishes and dances! 🙂





Rain, actually

30 08 2020

By the time I took this pic of lovely Chipeta, in the southern part of Spring Creek Basin, we were stomping through soupy mud (!). Another wave had briefly washed over us … and yet another little wave was on its way. Even the littlest arroyos were running – RUNNING – with actual, honest-to-goodness (and very muddy) WATER.

When I got back to lower Disappointment Valley on the road, the road and ground along it was dry. When I drove around and into the western part of the basin, my Jeep was leaving yet another trail of dreaded dust.

I’m not even kidding.

But at least part of the basin got rain, which seems to have been a bit of a toad gagger. 🙂





Comin’ c’mon!

29 08 2020

The rain was coming.

C’mon, rain!





The green that cures

24 08 2020

It’s not even lying (much!)! We’ll take any little dribble.





Green = good

22 07 2020

That looks lovely, right?! That’s nearly all of San Miguel County – McKenna Peak is outside the basin’s eastern boundary – under wonderful green, which in radar terms, of course, means RAIN.

Except that it wasn’t actually raining when I took this screenshot (around quarter after 8 a.m.). The heavens had leaked a little a little while earlier, but someone fixed (!) the leak. (Note to someone: We’re really OK with that kind of leak … and it could rip right open … really!)

We are so hopeful, and we need it BADLY – GOODLY? … We need the goodness of it in a really bad way ’cause it’s really kinda bad dry out there.





Gold from the sky

12 05 2020

051120rainbowoverFillyPeak1

We did get some sprinkles yesterday in a couple of light waves, mostly in the evening.

It’s all welcome, and we’re grateful for even the smallest amount of moisture.





Welcome green on a computer screen

22 04 2020

042120RAIN

Of course, there’s a bit of blue (snow) and red-and-yellow (heavy rain), too, but the moisture is what we’re concerned with, and it’s the moisture that lessens our considerable concern this early in the spring because of the *lack* of it for months and and months now.

Spring Creek Basin is mostly to the eastish and southeastish of the lowermost red-and-yellow blob. Some of it, yes, is not green-covered on the version of the weather map shown (KWTX Channel 10 is my parents’ news station in Central Texas, and it does feature an excellent radar map), but I’m confident that our our whole little region got a little bit of soothing drizzle for slightly more than a few minutes yesterday in the late afternoon.

FINALLY.

There’s nothing quite as uplifting in the high desert, in spring, than the sight of sprinkles drizzling from the heavens and the scent of that divine wetness-on-dry-desert-sage permeating the air.

UPDATE:

The above was typed around 4:30 or 5 p.m. Tuesday (yesterday).

The below, around 6:30ish p.m., kept happening:

042120RAIN2

We’re kinda happy on this Earth Day. 🙂

Happy 50th anniversary to this official celebration of our Earth. We owe her everything.





Summer rain = running creek

5 08 2019

Piedra above Spring Creek

Piedra grazes above FLOWING Spring Creek.

Yes, we got rain, and yes, we are very happy. 🙂 This isn’t the only creek flowing in Disappointment Valley after rain yesterday!





Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

24 07 2019

072319RAIN

If you said even a little prayer for rain in Southwest Colorado, thank you. Sincerely. 🙂

We got a really good, soft, fairly long, wonderfully welcome shower yesterday evening. The ground is sighing in gratitude, and so are we all.