weather goddess reigns supreme

this is truly bizarre. adam says that if new mexico has a weather goddess, she is either pregnant and prone to extreme hormonal mood swings, or she has multiple personalities and can't decide who she wants to be. either theory sounds fair to me, though i like to think of her as a pining lover who pretends to be happy one minute and then is floundering in grief the next. well, something bad must have happened, because she hasn't been this consistently upset since fall of 2002.

it has been raining here in socorro, pretty much non-stop, since friday afternoon. this may not seem like much to those of you who aren't in new mexico, but for us it's a pretty big deal. jordan told me yesterday that we've had five inches of rain, our yearly average, in the last four days. and it rained all of last night, too. i stayed awake and listened to it... for hours! i can't even remember the last time, before friday, that it rained for longer than about fifteen minutes. this is so weird.

of course our street floods and turns into a river, but apparently someone has been out in the rain working on that because it seems to be draining better every day. others were not so lucky. i've heard about a lot of roads being closed because the water was too deep, and people haven't been able to get home.

and our friends in escondita were actually flooded out of their house. it's rained so much that the levies broke, and their house was filled with water about waist-deep. the kids were home alone and actually had to be rescued. later, when it momentarily stopped raining, a group of people went back to rescue the animals. of course it started pouring again, and the van they drove in was overwhelmed and started to fill with water, and they had to climb out the windows and get clear of it. it's crazy.

this is supposed to be the desert! we're not supposed to have five straight days of rain! it freaks people out! jordan told me yesterday that it's supposed to rain for the rest of the week. that's so weird. and of course it's freezing, too, in a very humid way, and i had to get out my winter blanket and i've worn a jacket for several days now. i don't think the temperature has been over 80 degrees since thursday. i'm not really complaining about this, but still, it's not normal. this is new mexico in july. most people here don't even own an umbrella! my dad actually called me last night to ask if our house was okay and to see if anything was underwater.

it seems to have cleared up for now, but that's what i thought yesterday too. about noon i looked outside and it was all puddles and mud and sunshine, so, like an idiot, i thought our weather monstrosity was over and walked to work. it poured again. i was stuck there until about seven, when it let up long enough for me to get home. so strange.

on the other hand, our lawn is doing really well.