The rest of the week will be 109F to 112F. Yesterday, we took granddaughter up to 9200FT. on Mt. Lemon to escape the heat and do a short hike and picnic. It was fine there, but the grey clouds began to collect quickly. It began to sprinkle and by the time we ran back to the picnic blanket we were in a down-pore. As we arrived at the car, hail began.
We decided to go to Summer Haven a sort of town up there and get indoors for a treat. Before the time we got there, the dime size hail had us creeping at 20mph, then the floods in the roads and creek. Hey, it wasn't hot!
We drove back down in clear weather to the mountain's base in Tucson and Italian ice cream. Hot, but then cooling enough to sit on the patio (eek! steel chairs!) by the time we got our scream. As we finished, the wind picked up and dark clouds were coming from the south. A thousand feet down the road, hail! Nickle size hail was flying into the car sideways. It sounded like rocks.
Soon enough, as we headed into it, I figured it best to stop and just take it rather than increasing the velocity of the impacts.
I then noticed it looking like it was visiting my house across the valley and amazing lightning. We got back home a couple of hours later. Branches down, flooding, the wash still a river. The mini-split freaked out at the change in temp humidity and barometric pressure. First rain in well over a month, in the MONSOON SEASON! You know, the season of daily showers.
Today, it is back in the 109F range, plus extra humidity. Sunday, the laundry from a month vacation dried generally as fast as we hung it up on a line.
My air-conditioner is acting up, one is broken, the swamp-box cooler is swampy and acting up. It IS cooler in the shade and I'm doing periodic outdoor showers to cool off, although the water isn't particularly cool. Sun tea works great in this sh---t. AND, OF COURSE, I'M NAKED completely naked, except when I go outside out of the shade and don't want to burn my feet. I have to cool the bricks with water before I can stand to take the showers.
It is too hot to work on the air-conditioner. I am grateful for the swamp-box, my big shade tree, and the part of the mini split that still seems to be working in the B&B. I have to wonder what this is costing$$$$. I liked being on top of that mountain range, mid-70F's to mid-80's (not usual) with cool nights in a tent, heating with cozy blankets and a wood but burning stove (lots of free wood to burn).
NONE of this is normal. All of this is extremes, historic extremes. Extremes that are increasing, weird stuff. People in Atlanta choking on smoke from historic fires in Canada that I can see from space on National Weather Service! World wide record heat, days on end! Polar cap is navigable! Vermont getting even more rain flooding than the historic flooding that drowned them from a hurricane a few years ago.
When the jet stream gets pushed around by polar heat there is a chain reaction, all the way around the planet. All I I can do is get naked and learn to put up with it...and rant.
Oh yea. I just went out to hang the laundry and remembered that my sun tea had been out there an hour or more. It is very strong! Forgot, it can be instant tea out there on days like this!
Jbee