Rain rain go away pt 2

The weather continues to be unusual. When I wrote the first rain entry, I thought the trend was breaking. It’d been raining an inordinate amount at that time and I thought the rain had to be waning but it hasn’t been. Other than a few stray days, we continue to enjoy (we’d better, the farmers need it) appreciable and conspicuous precipitation. The intensity of this year’s monsoon was remarkable a month ago. Now, it seems unprecedented. Eric and I have looked for total precipitation for the year to date, but we can’t find the figures. We’re not looking in the right place I guess. Most obviously, one would think the local chapter of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network could help out but no dice.

Above is a map of the US. Las Cruces is marked with a yellow dot. And a long skinny arrow. Drawn really terribly. I’ve decided to learn how to manipulate images. Let this serve as a measure of my skills before learning photoshop. But I digress. The rest of the nation is enjoying clear skies, an idyllic end of summer jaunt. Us? We’re wading through mud.

All of this rain is very unusual. El Paso is similarly inundated; our sister city has been declared a federal disaster area. There’s talk of that happening here in Las Cruces too. I worry. I don’t know any data or the hard science regarding the debate of planet warming but the idea of generous continual rains in the arid southwest disturbs me. Am I witnessing climatic change within my own lifetime? I haven’t even seen Gore’s movie. I haven’t wanted to. I don’t need any encouragement. Eric sighs and rolls his eyes. Moss, the snarky commentor, will accuse me of showing my “liberal bias” as tho that were a bad thing. My physical world is changing, within my lifetime.


With all the rain, I am getting bored. It has been raining endlessly. I’m not used to this. You can’t go outside readily. We don’t even own an umbrella because we live in the desert. We got caught in the rain on our bikes yesterday after going to the farmer’s market. If I can’t ride my bike, I get cranky and quarrelsome. Yesterday morning, I went out with my running team (in training for the marathon). It wasn’t raining just then but it started soon after we finished. Today, I spent some time on the elliptical machine we have. Otherwise, I’d probably just would have gone nuts today. What do all of you do up north? I’ll bet you have umbrellas and go places. I’ll bet you have board games to while away the time.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow, again. All day. Just like it did today. I am so bored I’m reading Gordon Tullock (the one I’m reading is immaterial). Eric said the chapter on genetics was sufficient but it wasn’t. I’ve been dragged into the rest of it; it’s like a car wreck. A book that nobody edited. Who wants to correct the master? He may have been up for the Nobel in 2003 but economists always need an editor. And engineers too. Just my opinion.

The rain has affected our diet. With rain I think of winter and cold food. Comfort food. Brown food. Weird to see the summery green food poking out of the hydrator. Four striped mexican zucchinis. I have to cook those before they go bad. We’re having onion soup tomorrow. With red wine. I only like cooking with white onions. Everything we eat has lots of onions and garlic.

I’m looking for a good tomato soup recipe. A restaurant we frequent (Lorenzo’s) has this great cream of tomato soup. Do you have any ideas about wonderful cream of tomato soup? That’s not a particularly hot topic of food interest but if you have recipes, send them on! Please add those to comments. Thanks. I don’t know what most of you will be doing on Labor Day but I will be making soup. The rest of the country will be sun-filled and barbequing tomorrow but not us. I’ll be making french onion soup and curling up in my husband’s long sleeved flannel winter shirts. Have a great holiday.

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10 comments

  1. Bellaleigh says:

    Here in Illinois we haven’t had much rain this summer, and when we have, it’s only lasted a couple of hours and then poof! It’s gone. We’ll get the all-day rain in a couple of months. I hate umbrellas! Trying to get into the car with one is impossible – if you fold it up too soon, then you get drenched. If you get into the car frst, you can’t get the damn thing closed because it’s stuck in the door opening. I think we should just wear those plastic rain hats that fold up (oh my) and be done with it!

    My folks had a home in Deming and loved to go into Las Cruces. They had a lot of fun out there for a few years and did a lot of exploring. It always sounded like such a wonderful place to be.

    Sorry but I don’t have a recipe for a good tomato soup. We have lots of main-course soup recipes: curried chicken-vegetable chowder, beef with orzo, and minestrone gratine. You are so right: comfort food at its best!

  2. Alison Cummins says:

    Oh, and I haven’t dared watch Gore’s movie either. Most people who have enthusiastically encourag others to do so as well, saying it wasn’t too depressing. But my beloved watched it and said it was. I’m already depressed enough, thankyouverymuch.

  3. Marguerite says:

    Tomato Soup: one quart canned tomatoes, onion, carrots (two, three?) shreaded, curry powder, 1Tsugar, 1 cup broth. Saute onions and carrot, add curry powder and sugar, carmalize a little, add broth and tomatoes, Yum. I don’t eat tomatoes any more but this was one of my favs when I did.
    I live straight north of you across the Colorado boarder, I’ve lived here almost thirty years and this weather we are having is like we had when I first moved here, only not even as wet. We had waist high wildflowers back then, I bet the “bee-weed” is blooming down there, I saw some when I was surveying a couple of weeks ago, beautiful.
    There are certain plants that only bloom once every ten or twenty years, some even longer than that, they need certain conditions that only happen every ten or twenty years. Stay dry, I love to knit when the weather is wet!

  4. Alisa Benay says:

    We live in Colorado Springs. We took the kid up in the mountains this weekend and passed a sign that said “fire danger: moderate”. I don’t think I’ve seen it anything other than “extreme” since we’ve been out here. All the rain does make for some pretty lush scenery out here…that and a leaky roof we never knew we had.

  5. Kathleen says:

    Wow, between Alison and her beloved, I see that we’ve gotten at least 20″ of rain -in just the last 60 days. Wow. That’s three times the usual rate.

    Thanks everybody. I got two great tomato soup recipes and one suggestion to take up knitting. I’m torn. If I take up knitting, I may have something to wear by winter. My other option of course is to take up boat building.

  6. Eric H says:

    Actually, I found several websites that pegged the average rainfall for LC between 6.75″ and 9″. I couldn’t find a claimed deviation from the norm, so it’s hard to say if this is extraordinary or simply above average. In my opinion, it’s extraordinary, but we must keep in mind that the low years have to average with something to bring them up to that average, otherwise the average would be lower.

    I have not yet rolled my eyes at the suggestion of Gore’s new movie (I already own his book) or global warming in general (on which I own several books). I have rolled my eyes at “The Day After”, which I think feeds the worst kind of environmental naivete and extremism. I will also note that all of the forecasters predicted another dry summer and another record-breaking hurricane season for us – the brothers-in-arms of those who are predicting a 2-4.5 degree C increase 100 years from now (not next summer or from 1990 to today, but from now to 2100). If they can’t get it right from one year to the next, how much confidence can we place in their 100 year forecasts?

  7. Jess says:

    I saw a news report about how the ozone hole was repairing itself and if I wasn’t so “don’t really want to know cause if it’s bad then I’ll worry” I’d google to see if this is actually going to help with global warming. They says it’s because we have lowered our use of chloroforms. I don’t really like knowing how bad it could get just what I can do about it. Oprah had a great show on that and one of the suggestions was using the florescent light bulbs but the blue hue makes everything look day glo and hurt my eyes so I stopped using them. Can’t they make an earth friendly light bulb that has a warm natural color to it?

  8. Eric H says:

    Jess;

    Can’t they make an earth friendly light bulb that has a warm natural color to it?

    Yes, I think so. The warm white color (2700 K) is supposed to have a slightly yellowish “feel” similar to that of an incandescent. I swapped to CFLs years ago, and they have gotten much better since, but I am not that sensitive to the color temperature.

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