Friday, August 13, 2004
An ill wind arisen!
Yesterday it was 99 degrees at 2pm. I almost had to put on a sweater! It seems that the summer heat is threatening to break. Of course we're trading it for mid-summer thunder storms. What the locals here laughingly call "the Monsoons". When I was a Geography major, (no laughing please) I understood Monsoon to mean the southwestern flow from the Indian Ocean onto the India land mass. This wind flow causes huge storms that flood thousands of square miles. Now, I don't know where the "Phoenicians" get their delusions of grandeur from but, the flood waters must have passed our house by. I think Death Valley gets more rain than we do. We do get a lot of dust, though.
Our house has two evaporative coolers (sometimes known as swamp coolers) and an air conditioner. The swamp coolers rely on low humidity to cool air. In June, we had humidity around 8% and the coolers worked great. It was 105 outside and the air coming out of the cooler was around 75. Now with the "monsoon" (whatever) the humidity is around 30-40% and coolers don't cut it. The A/C is working fine. The only problem is that it is much harder to work outside due to the humidity.
The kind of thunderstorms we get are called Air Mass Thunderstorms and they can be very violent. They produce a phenomena called a gust front. When the rain and cool air falls down from a thunderstorm, it hits the ground and shoots out in front of the storm. Where we live, the gust front picks up a bunch of dust and the result is a wall of dust that races along the desert dropping visibility to nothing. Everything that is not sealed up gets filled with this dust. It is a major pain.
Now, where these facts all come together is that we live about four miles from a stock yard. It is about three miles long and holds about 10 million cows, plus or minus 3. When the wind is blowing from the southwest, it can reach our house and the airport. Yikes! Sometimes, on a really hot day, we get dust devils out in the desert. They are the biggest dust devils I have ever seen. They get over 1,000 feet tall and they spin very fast. I have seen five and six at a time while driving. The problem is when you drive toward town, you have to go by the stock yard and from time to time I have been driving when a dust devil crosses the road right in front of me. Now, the dust devil doesn't care what it's spinning over. Dirt, Cactus, Stock Yard. It's all the same to the devil. It just picks it up and swirls it. So, if the timing is just right, and you haven't remembered to hit the re-circulate button on the a/c. You don't go through a dust devil, oh no, you get the joy of knowing the inside of...you guessed it...a "Crap Devil". One time I was working out under the carport with my table saw and one of these "Demons of Dung" caught me in the open. Hello Sally, that sucked! Now just imagine if a 35,000 foot air mass thunderstorm starts poring it's 50 mph down draft on the desert and passes over the stock yard. Good-bye gust front, hello Crap Front!
One of the first projects we started on was to enclose our carport into a garage. I put up two walls in two days. Complete with windows and side door. Dad helped with the wiring and siding and then he freaked me out for not getting a building permit. So, while the project went on hold for the last month due to the heat, I took advantage of the time to go to the county and act like I was planning to build, and I got a permit. I thought it would be funny to call them up the day after I got the permit and say "OK, I'm ready for the inspection!" We have our garage door coming next week and then we can start using the a/c I installed in the garage. I am frantically studying up on drywall installation. No more Crap Devils for me!
Yesterday it was 99 degrees at 2pm. I almost had to put on a sweater! It seems that the summer heat is threatening to break. Of course we're trading it for mid-summer thunder storms. What the locals here laughingly call "the Monsoons". When I was a Geography major, (no laughing please) I understood Monsoon to mean the southwestern flow from the Indian Ocean onto the India land mass. This wind flow causes huge storms that flood thousands of square miles. Now, I don't know where the "Phoenicians" get their delusions of grandeur from but, the flood waters must have passed our house by. I think Death Valley gets more rain than we do. We do get a lot of dust, though.
Our house has two evaporative coolers (sometimes known as swamp coolers) and an air conditioner. The swamp coolers rely on low humidity to cool air. In June, we had humidity around 8% and the coolers worked great. It was 105 outside and the air coming out of the cooler was around 75. Now with the "monsoon" (whatever) the humidity is around 30-40% and coolers don't cut it. The A/C is working fine. The only problem is that it is much harder to work outside due to the humidity.
The kind of thunderstorms we get are called Air Mass Thunderstorms and they can be very violent. They produce a phenomena called a gust front. When the rain and cool air falls down from a thunderstorm, it hits the ground and shoots out in front of the storm. Where we live, the gust front picks up a bunch of dust and the result is a wall of dust that races along the desert dropping visibility to nothing. Everything that is not sealed up gets filled with this dust. It is a major pain.
Now, where these facts all come together is that we live about four miles from a stock yard. It is about three miles long and holds about 10 million cows, plus or minus 3. When the wind is blowing from the southwest, it can reach our house and the airport. Yikes! Sometimes, on a really hot day, we get dust devils out in the desert. They are the biggest dust devils I have ever seen. They get over 1,000 feet tall and they spin very fast. I have seen five and six at a time while driving. The problem is when you drive toward town, you have to go by the stock yard and from time to time I have been driving when a dust devil crosses the road right in front of me. Now, the dust devil doesn't care what it's spinning over. Dirt, Cactus, Stock Yard. It's all the same to the devil. It just picks it up and swirls it. So, if the timing is just right, and you haven't remembered to hit the re-circulate button on the a/c. You don't go through a dust devil, oh no, you get the joy of knowing the inside of...you guessed it...a "Crap Devil". One time I was working out under the carport with my table saw and one of these "Demons of Dung" caught me in the open. Hello Sally, that sucked! Now just imagine if a 35,000 foot air mass thunderstorm starts poring it's 50 mph down draft on the desert and passes over the stock yard. Good-bye gust front, hello Crap Front!
One of the first projects we started on was to enclose our carport into a garage. I put up two walls in two days. Complete with windows and side door. Dad helped with the wiring and siding and then he freaked me out for not getting a building permit. So, while the project went on hold for the last month due to the heat, I took advantage of the time to go to the county and act like I was planning to build, and I got a permit. I thought it would be funny to call them up the day after I got the permit and say "OK, I'm ready for the inspection!" We have our garage door coming next week and then we can start using the a/c I installed in the garage. I am frantically studying up on drywall installation. No more Crap Devils for me!
// posted by Chris @ Friday, August 13, 2004
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