Cool! (and wet)

I know this is going to be hard to believe, but yesterday's official high temperature here in Bisbee, Arizona was 69 degrees F. That's 21 degrees cooler than Minneapolis and just four degrees higher than Seattle and Anchorage. And it's wet, too! In 24 hours over an inch of rain fell at our house, mostly slow and gentle like winter rains but garnished with pea-sized hail from one intense afternoon storm. June is usually our hottest, driest month, with little hope of moisture until the last week or so, if then. Yesterday's precipitation was almost double the June average.

The rains started in the middle of the night. It was lovely listening to the the rumble of thunder and the murmur of raindrops on the roof, until the sploit sploit sploit of water hitting the bedroom carpet sent me lunging for a wastebasket to catch the drips. Tom's replaced I don't know how many shingles ripped away by the howling winds of spring and early summer, but guess it's time to splurge on the services of a roofing expert.

Needless to say, there are some happy critters in our neighborhood today. We've been hearing a lot from the Crissal Thrashers who make their home in our neighbors' dense conifer trees and a male Lucy's Warbler who's having trouble dealing with all the recently fledged House Finches invading his domain. The first Cloudless Sulphurs of the season, a male courting a female as she dodged among the branches of our plum tree, made an early appearance. Normally these beauties are harbingers of the rainy season as it moves north. Their early arrival, along with the appearance of a Plain-capped Starthroat at Agua Caliente Park in Tucson and a Berylline Hummingbird at Ramsey Canyon Inn, are encouraging signs for the season to come.

Bisbee will be back up in the high 80's by Thursday, but in another couple of weeks we should see signs of the typical "monsoon" weather pattern that gives us storms like yesterday's almost every afternoon. We hope, anyway.