Howdy folks.

This is your Occasional Arizona Correspondent with some tidbits of information and a smattering of humor – dry humor, that is.

You folks have had some refreshing rain in the last few weeks.  Feel lucky.  Arizona is in its third year of a record drought.   Yes, a drought in the desert!  It’s a peculiar concept, but it is official. 

The Sonoran Desert is the lushest desert in the world.  Normally it barely qualifies as a desert.  Right now, however, it’s qualifying more than usual.  

My thermometer registered 112 degrees the other day.  It got windy around noon and the wind chill temperature hit 130 degrees.

We do get some relief at night, however.  It’s not uncommon for the meteorologist on the 10:00 PM news to announce that it has cooled down to 90 degrees at Sky Harbor Airport. 

There are still some farms around us, although many fields have been planted to red tile roofs as the population explodes.  Those that haven’t sport a lot of corn this year.  It has already tasseled and will be harvested shortly.  Back there in cooler climes the rule of thumb to beat the autumn frost has always been "knee high by the fourth of July".  Here the rule of thumb is “knee high by April Fool’s Day”, and if it doesn’t make that it will be popcorn by the Fourth of July.

The farmers here rotate the crops annually.  They plant cotton, alfalfa, corn and something I can’t identify.  I look forward to the corn years because those cornfields actually help keep it cooler in this neck of the woods.  Often when driving out from the city one can actually feel the temperature drop when approaching the cornfields.  It may only drop a few degrees, but most of us don’t complain – we’ll take whatever relief we can get.

Speaking of rain, you have probably seen on national television the two huge fires (not too far from Fort Apache) in the Apache-Sitgreave National Forest.  Yes, Arizona is not all desert – it has the largest Ponderosa Pine forest in the world. 

Anyway, the local news stations have their sky cam helicopters up there in the mountains showing the raging fires from on high.  One of the pilots mentioned on the news that they had been warned not to get too close to the 28,000 ft. plumes of smoke because the extreme heat of the firestorm creates vortex winds that lift logs up and spew them out of the top of the plume.  That’s what he said, really.

Speaking of rain and fire, back in the early nineties we had an exceptionally wet monsoon season.  Yes, that is what they are called officially here in the desert – monsoon seasons!   The spring was spectacular as the desert flora made the most of it.  The cactus and desert flowers bloomed.

The problem came later when it all dried out.  I watched a wildfire about ten miles away on the adjacent Gila River Indian Community Reservation.  I estimated the flames to be about 40 feet high.

When the wind picked up and came down the south slope of South Mountain, the flames took off south with great haste.  There was no way to stop them.  Even the slurry bombers were grounded.

It looked like no one could outrace this wall of fire once it started moving.  The news the next morning confirmed that.  The speeding wall of fire had overtaken a water tanker truck.  Fortunately no one was hurt. 

I’ve been told that when that situation develops, the only way to fight such a wildfire is to set up a defense line behind the nearest road in the wildfire’s path.  The road acts as a firebreak, and the fire crews can concentrate on the conflagrations that breach the firebreak. 

In this case the road was Interstate 10/17 connecting Phoenix and Tucson.  That would have been a rush for any tourist passing through.

I’d never seen a wildfire before coming to the desert.

Next time I’ll update you on the Cotton crop here in the desert.  Cotton is a water intensive crop, and all crops here have to be irrigated, so you might wonder why cotton is a principal commodity exported from Arizona.   Tune in next time for the answer.

Your Occasional Arizona Correspondent.