Burst and Break
I had heard that New Mexico has a monsoon season in late summer. I thought it was a tongue in cheek way of saying thunderstorms happen more in summer than winter, which is true everywhere. I thought New Mexicans made a joke of it, because it's normally so dry and rain is so rare.
But New Mexico really does have a monsoon and it's a real phenomenon - the North American Monsoon. It's the same seasonal weather process that happens in the Tibetan Plateau and India, but not as severe.
The causes and the atmospheric moisture conditions are the same. The timing is more variable -- the monsoon arrives here earlier some years and later other years. And the frequency of downpours follows a "burst and break" pattern where it rains heavily for a short pulse, then there are breaks of beautiful sunshine for days, then downpours again.
We arrived in Santa Fe in early August, and saw little rain for weeks. The wide arroyos that surround neighborhoods were all dusty dry. But now, in September and early October, we are in the traditional monsoon pattern. My rain gauge shows me we've had almost five inches all told now. Santa Fe only gets 14 inches all year.
The natives say "we get about a foot of rain a year, unfortunately it all falls in 45 minutes."
I thought the rain that made the road to Chaco Canyon impassable and knocked out power at the park was a "monster" storm, some kind of aberration. It wasn't. It was a predictable part of the monsoon.
It's a distinct pattern of brief heavy bursts of buckets of rain followed by breaks of bright sun. The monsoon is a real weather thing.
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| Water pours from canales that drain the flat roofs in a rainstorm. |
But New Mexico really does have a monsoon and it's a real phenomenon - the North American Monsoon. It's the same seasonal weather process that happens in the Tibetan Plateau and India, but not as severe.
The causes and the atmospheric moisture conditions are the same. The timing is more variable -- the monsoon arrives here earlier some years and later other years. And the frequency of downpours follows a "burst and break" pattern where it rains heavily for a short pulse, then there are breaks of beautiful sunshine for days, then downpours again.
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| The view outside the dining room window, where I want to plant a garden eventually. |
We arrived in Santa Fe in early August, and saw little rain for weeks. The wide arroyos that surround neighborhoods were all dusty dry. But now, in September and early October, we are in the traditional monsoon pattern. My rain gauge shows me we've had almost five inches all told now. Santa Fe only gets 14 inches all year.
The natives say "we get about a foot of rain a year, unfortunately it all falls in 45 minutes."
 |
| Wikipedia's picture of a monsoon rain over eastern New Mexico. It's the same sight we see in Santa Fe when it rains here -- columns of water pour down and "walk" across the horizon. |
I thought the rain that made the road to Chaco Canyon impassable and knocked out power at the park was a "monster" storm, some kind of aberration. It wasn't. It was a predictable part of the monsoon.
It's a distinct pattern of brief heavy bursts of buckets of rain followed by breaks of bright sun. The monsoon is a real weather thing.
 |
| Every house has multiple canales on all sides and when they are all pouring it's like living in a thundering waterfall. |
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