Rain Play

For those who might live on the other side of the country (or have no social media/news contact whatsoever), the Phoenix area experimented with having Seattle's climate yesterday.  We got over 3 inches of rain in a day (some areas of the valley measured nearly 6 inches).  Now, that may seem like nothing special, but when you consider Phoenix averages only 8 inches for the entire year you can begin to understand why our rainfall was record-breaking yesterday.  (And hey, even Seattle's record rain day is about 5 inches.  Less than what Chandler got yesterday.)

Anyway, in the desert that water really has nowhere to go, so it tends to flood washes and arroyos and streets and occasionally houses.  There is some planning for deluge-like rainfall; that's what our rain during monsoon season is like, copious and sudden.    Right across the street from our house is a big grassy bowl called a retention basin, which is basically a place designed for all the extra water to collect.

And yesterday, collect water it did:

This picture was taken later in the afternoon, when the rain had turned into sprinkles and we no longer had a river running down the street.

In my neighborhood some enterprising neighbors even launched a boat into one of the retention basins and let their kids row around.  Plenty of water for it.

In the morning it was pretty hairy when I tried to get the kids to school.  Flooding had closed so many sections of roadway that even though I had no need to go anywhere near the freeways (thank goodness, or I might need a new car) we had quite an adventurous (and long) commute to school.

I spent a couple hours at the school volunteering in J's classroom-- many schools were closed, but ours wasn't one of them-- and then stopped by the grocery store, so luckily on my way home some of the flood waters were starting to recede just a bit and I made it home without incident.

The rain kept coming down all the way into the afternoon.  Eventually, it tapered off enough that I decided to let S head out and play in it.  The humidity was miserable and it felt like we were hanging out in a sauna, but the temps were only in the low 90's so it did feel like playtime!

S splashing in the gutter.  Rain gear, who needs it?  Bring on the pink tutus!!

I confess that I enjoyed it almost as much as she did.  I let myself act like a kid, running up and down the gutter, kicking up the water to splash, and making boats out of weeds and racing alongside them until they reached the drain.  

I only dared to get the camera out because even the sprinkling had stopped by this point.

Entertainment for the neighbors was also provided.  We ran into one next door neighbor coming back from the mailbox while we were charging through the gutter laughing like crazy.  He stared from S to me and smiled broadly.  He did remark on how cute S looked (which was certainly true!) but I wonder if he thought I'd lost my marbles.  Good for him to know the truth though.

This morning I was chatting with my neighbor from across the street and she brought up that she had seen us playing in the water also.  She sounded kind of envious.  "I didn't think anybody did that anymore," was her comment.  Maybe it was just our street-- clearly there was boating and other high jinks taking place elsewhere in the community-- but S and I did have the water all to ourselves.

It was glorious!!!!

Soaked and supremely happy!