Diggy, diggy

In & Out arrived right on time, dropping off the mini-excavator yesterday morning, and we wasted no time putting the digger to work.

The only downside to all this hard work is that we have to take attention away from finishing up the second SunStation, which is due to be delivered in a few days.

After spending all day digging and scraping and leveling, et cetera, a storm moved in early in the evening.  

What seemed like just a small and isolated rainstorm ended up dropping a half inch of rain as it moved in and out of the area, and then back again? It was very confusing, listening to the storm, because a strong burst would hit, then taper off and end.  Then half an hour later, the rains came back.  And the lightning never went away.  There was a fantastic light show for hours, long into the night.

But even though there was plenty of rainfall around the mountain, our neighbor Dan got hardly any precipitation at his home which is nestled into the Northwest side of the West Corazón Peak. The weather here can behave in ways you wouldn't imagine.  

There seems like there is a chance of more rain in the forecast, which would make this the wettest October we've ever had if it comes to fruition. No doubt that will make hunting season even more active this year.

Soggy

At the end of the rainy day, we had accumulated an inch of rain for this storm (that's across two days).  Everything is soaked pretty thoroughly, and the creeks (and roads) were flowing.

The presidio gallena was holding water, though the birds didn't seem to mind.  Some fresh wood chips took care of the problem, and gave the birds some new stuff to scratch and peck.

Rain and Sun Station

It's been raining today and yesterday, with no sign of stopping. The rain has been a double edged sword.  We're enjoying the cooler temperatures and catching some rain in our tank.  But a lightning strike wiped out most of our friend and neighbor's power system.

We've gotten over a half of an inch so far, which translates to potentially  70 gallons or so from our one little roof. When we have all our roofs on the property guttered, that half an inch of rain will mean some 425 gallons of water to our storage tanks.

There's been no sun for a couple days, but it is easier to be thrifty with power when you don't need every fan on to fight the heat.

The new SunStation uses the same 85W poly panels as our household PV array.

We have just started building another SunStation for an off-gridder way out in the desert past the ghost town. This new one will be smaller than the first, with just over 400 rated watts of PV. We're using the same kind of panels that we use in our own power system, so we can definitely vouch for the durability.

Wet Stuff

That funny, wet stuff has been falling from the sky quite a bit lately.  We took the photo above Saturday morning, after it rained all night Friday.  Then it rained slow and steady on Saturday night, and we got another light shower this afternoon. Three days in a row of precipitation feels mighty nice.

But it also means the bug population is exploding. Whenever it rains, the termites bubble up from the ground and fly into the air, like some weird, effervescent entomological eruption. But lately we're nearing plague-like proportions.

 And also coming out to eat all these tasty morsels are the arachnids and other bug-hunters.

The chickens are doing their part to eat as many bugs as they can catch.

And the kittens have become such good hunters that they can snatch them right out of the air most of the time.

The prolonged rain should lead to another flower bloom, also.  The lechugillas are the most recent plants to bloom in our area, and I think they can be underrated.  Some people don't realize they bloom at all, but they actually have a very pretty display if you catch the show in time and get up close to the action.

Lechugillas are agaves, and their flowers are similar to those of the century plant.  But unlike the century plant which blooms only once, right before it dies, lechugilla agaves bloom every year.

The rain also shows off how well camouflaged Wrinkles is in her desert environs.  Her red leopard pattern mimics the dappled color of our wet, volcanic sand perfectly.

Rain, Mud, Stuck

Had a few adventures yesterday....

Made a small shopping trip south in the AM, then went to visit Diamond Dave and Pepper.  All the dogs had fun, and played in the mud puddles while humans stuck their heads under various autos' hoods.

Then headed up farther north to look at a new friend's broken-down Subaru.  It's hard to be out here in the desert without a vehicle, so we wanted to help as much as possible. Unfortunately we had to give our friend some bad news about the timing belt jumping a tooth or two. 

We headed home at dusk, but made the mistake of trying the back road.  Thanks to the recent rain, the road is a mud pit.  We made it about a mile or so while the road was dry, but hit the first mud patch and got stuck fifty feet in.

After some hooting and hollering, we hoofed it back to a customer's house and made a distress call to our good friend Terry. In typical chivalric style, he came and got us and brought us back home.

We're headed out now to try and yank the old girl out of the mud and back onto dry land.  Bringing the backup camera, so we'll post photos of our embarrassing episode soon.

Rain & Pizza

Quite an exciting day yesterday. We ran around the ranch doing automotive repair, then came home and hosted a small pizza party for our friends and neighbors.

Suffered a loss, though, as my camera crashed onto the rock floor and bit the dust. We'll probably send it to Canon for repair, if possible. But that means that there are no photos of our friends eating pizza, and no photos of the big rain storm that crashed the party.

It was a good, strong storm, but since our rain gauge bit it in the hailstorm, we did not get a measurement of rainfall.  Enough to start the creeks running and flood the road in spots.  The storm also brought the temperature plummeting, so everyone was freezing cold in tank tops and shorts.

We've had a few sprinkles this past week, but it was nice to finally get hit with a full rainstorm.  Everything is greening up and new growth is everywhere!

Last photo before she bit the dust.

snake eyes

Been an exciting day so far. In case we had forgotten that it is now the rainy season, nature scheduled a few reminders.

First thing in the morning, we spotted another viper.
This one is a western diamondback, with very pretty markings. Just two feet long with seven buttons (do you count the first, the black one?).






Our chicks are doing well, and this Friday they will be four weeks old.  That's almost halfway to slaughter, for the meaties.

Foxy Lady has accepted her large brood amiably. She has gotten so large now herself, that we worry she may break a leg.

And the rain has been wonderful.  We got a solid rain yesterday evening, a light sprinkle this morning, and another downpour began around 2:30 this afternoon.

Even more rain may be in our future, and we're hopeful for an exciting and lush rainy season.

Desert Marigold

Rain Snake

Rainy Rattlesnake

Currently sprinkling here, with some thunder and lightning.

Went out to get some rain photos and found this oddly patterned little rattler.

Some say it's a baby Mojave. Some say it's a full-grown Desert Massasauga.

Glazing

We had a diesel generator to work on yesterday, and it's pretty rare that there's something about an IC engine we're surprised by.  But I have to say, a fuel filter clogged with flies was definitely a first.  Luckily it was a pretty simple fix.

Afterwards we started making more permanent repairs to the Cafe Colando.

 

Replacing the windows is a great opportunity to get rid of her eyesore front-end. Not to mention that the new glazing will be much more energy efficient.

We moved the cactus garden to where the lettuce garden used to be.  They're not as tasty as the prevous residents, but more hail-tolerant (they were getting too much sun on the east side, anyway).

Folks say some cacti are like "dry whiskey," in that you'll be feeling tipsy if you eat one, but we'd rather stick with traditional whiskey.

This Mothera of a lepidopteran dropped by the Cafe at lunchtime yesterday. Pretty friendly guy/gal; he/she loved being handled.

Torrential Hail Storm

We had a really vicious storm hit us Friday night. It came on so fast even we 'clever' humans got caught in it.  Beautiful, towering clouds circled us all afternoon ... then in rolled a big dust storm.  The dust storm was a warning, one that we didn't heed, as what kicked up all that dust turned out to be quarter-sized hail.

The hail hit our immediate area incredibly hard.  Along with the two inches of rain, there must have been at least two inches of hail that pelted everything to smithereens.  All the foliage was knocked off the plants.  Immediately around our house, we lost about 80-90% of all the vegetation.

The rain and hail caused a massive flash flood, the worst we have ever seen since we first arrived here 3 years ago.  The flooding washed so much soil and vegetation away.  Lake Ament Road is impassible without a truck or SUV.  The road to Gigabytes Cabin 2.0 is completely impassable, as a deep rock gully has opened up across the road.  So that project is on hold for a while...

I'm sure there were a lot of critters killed in the sudden storm.  The dogs found two flattened mice bodies.  Almost as flat as paper.

The hail broke all the east windows in the Cafe Colando. It also killed much of the gardens, including Sprocket's agave.

After all is said and done, we pulled through just fine.  None of our animals were hurt, and only some minor damage was incurred on a couple of buildings.  The roads are very bad, though, and we have a lot of clean up to do.

Temporarily stranded.

We expect to hear the frogs soon!

Hidden Lake overflows through this waterfall.

Feels like we've been moving mountains for days now.

Several panes of glass were shattered by the horizontal hail.

Guess it's time to buy a new rain gauge!

All grass and vegetation is washed away.

Bobcat rode out the storm and flood at the bottom of the creek.

She ended up pulling herself out of the creek pretty easily.

555

Wind turbines can provide power overnight, during storms, and on cloudy days -- or when your solar system has a hiccup, like this one did.

We traveled deep into the Solitario section of the Ranch on Monday to answer a solar power trouble call.

After a fuse change, the system seemed to be back to it's normal, robust state.  

It did start to rain as we left, and we were happy to be caught in some surreal weather conditions.  Saw the biggest dustdevil we've ever laid eyes upon, sucking in dust from miles away in big orange clouds.

We ended the workday with 2-4-1 burgers at the Starlight, where we got to watch the storm blow into town -- and catch some happy locals and bewildered turistos in the rain.

Every table is a work of art at the Starlight Theatre.

Gigabyte's Cabin 2.0 under the West Corazon.

A look at the new barn being constructed.

Raining cats and more cats....

We adopted a pair of kittens from the Alpine Humane Society last week.  We are calling the male (orange tabby) Nacho, and the female (calico) Corazon, or Cora for short.

The cats will be vermin defense no. 1 on our ranch, and they are adjusting to their new environment very well.  Naia has been exceptionally well behaved around the kittens, and they are also becoming very relaxed around dogs.

For now, they are just adorable entertainment for us and Naia.  We may try to acclimate them to the chickens later, but no miracles predicted....

 We also were pleasantly surprised by a sudden downpour yesterday evening, around dinner time.  We caught a half-inch of rain in about 30 or 40 minutes, and it almost seemed as though the creeks would be running.  If we had gotten just a little more precipitation, the roads would have washed a bit, but the rain stopped before that could happen.

After the rain stopped and we could hit the roads again, we headed over to the West Corazon Draw which runs through our HQ's 20 acres.  No frogs spotted yet, but we're keeping our ears open at night.

NOAA predicts a 30% chance of rain for the rest of the week, so we'll have our fingers crossed. 

Before the sky got too dark, we hopped on the Bobcat to move some nice, damp earth around.  We recently repaired the lighting circuit, so we can run at night.

We used some of the earth excavated at the barn site to bolster the downhill side of the barn.

It's still a work in progress, and there is much to do before we can start dairying.  For now, the roof makes a great cover for parking cars and equipment!  And it's already catching rain for us!

Rain, Rain, Come Our Way!

All said and done, yesterday's and last night's rain added up to six tenths of an inch of water in our rain gauge!

NOAA predicts 50% chance of more precipitation tonight.  Hopefully this means a beautiful desert spring full of colorful cactus flowers.

Storm Rolling In?

It's fixin' to rain down in Terlingua, y'all!