Mighty Monsoon!!

 

 

Last night our mountain valley experienced a Mighty Monsoon!

We’ve not seen a monsoon like this here for 8 years! The rain fell in buckets, flooding culverts, and overflowing arroyos into the roads. It washed away large amounts of soil and loose plant material which clogged the culverts, causing more flooding.

This is the only road into and out of our neighborhood. (And yes, I’m wearing PJs! lol!)

 

After the storm, some of my neighbors braved the flooded road.

A video I took last night of our neighborhood arroyos filled with fast flowing water.

I have never seen this little arroyo filled with this much water before last night.

 

Because of the cold rain and the hail, the water was freezing cold! I thought I’d go out in flips flops to play in the water. Brrr! I need to buy some Wellies!

 

Well, it appears one of my neighbors lives in a flood zone! Who knew! We have never seen her yard flooded like this, and the little arroyo has never had more than a trickle of water in it.

This is my neighbor Val of Fantastyk Voyage Blog’s property. I’ve never seen the water running that fast and deep in this arroyo. She uses the arroyo on the left as a road to her barn. She would have required a raft or canoe to forge down there last night. It might have been fun!

The water ran across Val’s property carrying soil and silt and vegetation, which clogged the culvert and caused water to overflow across the road and down into another neighbor’s driveway.

The water rushed down their driveway and split into two rivers in front of their garage, creating a moat around their house.

This is the left side of their house……the water on the left is an arroyo with a culvert. But the water moat around their house came from the blocked culvert and overflowing arroyo across the road.

The moat around my neighbor’s house. They were out this morning shoveling mud and water out of their garage and off their driveway.

Here’s a video I took of the flooding at their house.

My daughter was pretty shocked at the amount of water overflowing out of the arroyos onto the road.

We had a waterfall running down our rock wall in our backyard. That’s something we’ve never seen before!

And we had hail!

And the hail brought much cooler temps. It went from 89F degrees down to 56F degrees in less than an hour!

 

Our side yard and back patio flooded, too.

My neighbors weren’t the only ones that had a moat form around their house. Thankfully, my chicken coop sits on higher ground, so just like my neighbors, my chickens didn’t  float away.