Crazy thunderstorm

[orezok]

We have some "unusual" weather out here in the desert, but this is the strangest. We had a thunderstorm that had continuous rolling thunder for a full 45 minutes without a single second of silence. I would say that there were 3 to 4 cells surrounding me. The start to finish was well over an hour. It was all up in the clouds and I never saw a single lightning bolt. The total rain output didn't even cover the ground.

 

[cqaigy2]

Wow, that's a long time!

 

[RobertBrown]

that's funny :laughing:
Cause it happens almost everyday here. Not unusual at all.

I reckon there were some flash floods somewhere around you....I lived in AZ for a while. The flash floods were a real concern in the desert

 

[orezok]

Yeah... You guys are lucky. We never get to see hurricanes!

But there have been two 7+ earthquakes within 50 miles of me in the last 20 years.

 

[RobertBrown]

We had an earthquake a few years ago, few people even knew it happened.
I think it was a 5.8.
Unlike a hurricane, it was not forecasted

 

[jinman]

Jim, I think that is called a dry thunderstorm. When they occur in areas with forests and lots of dry grass, they normally end up starting fires. Probably some lightning hit the ground but was too weak to be easily be seen. . .or may not. However, there is always more cloud-to-cloud lightning than cloud to ground. As dry as you are in the desert, you don't have to worry so much about fires except in isolated areas because you simply don't have enough vegetation to sustain range fires. Are the Joshua tree forests thick enough to sustain fire? Is Joshua tree "forest" a misnomer?

 

[orezok]

Jim, I think that is called a dry thunderstorm. When they occur in areas with forests and lots of dry grass, they normally end up starting fires. Probably some lightning hit the ground but was too weak to be easily be seen. . .or may not. However, there is always more cloud-to-cloud lightning than cloud to ground. As dry as you are in the desert, you don't have to worry so much about fires except in isolated areas because you simply don't have enough vegetation to sustain range fires. Are the Joshua tree forests thick enough to sustain fire? Is Joshua tree "forest" a misnomer?

I'll let you judge if this constitutes a Joshua Tree "forest". :laughing:

But as you can see, there is a lot of dry, but not dead vegetation that easily supports wildfires. It will green up after the monsoons in August/September and in the winter rains in January. A lot of people think that all deserts look like the ones in the old westerns which were mostly shot in Arizona. I don't know how these plants survive when some years we have less than an inch of precipitation.

Wildfires are a fact of life out here.

 

[orezok]

I forgot to mention that while I had no rain, just a couple of miles south of me they had flash flooding.

 

[jinman]

I'll let you judge if this constitutes a Joshua Tree "forest". :laughing:

But as you can see, there is a lot of dry, but not dead vegetation that easily supports wildfires.

That will absolutely support wildfires. If there is some wind, Katie bar the door. . . How far are you from Ridgecrest? I spent two weeks training at China Lake and stayed in a hotel in Ridgecrest. The tallest things other than buildings were the rocks and the Joshua trees.

 

[orezok]

South of there closer to MCAGCC Twentynine.