A rare spring storm struck Arivaca on Wednesday May 9th. I was working on my ‘cob’ studio when I noticed a dark gray sky to the east and monsoon-like thunderheads building to the east-southeast. When I started hearing thunder above my head, I packed my tools and headed-indoors. That’s when I noticed the unusual cloud formation above my head. So I grabbed my Panasonic LUMIX FZ-35 digital camera and took the accompanying photo to this post.
The subsequent storm lasted about 2-hours with plenty of lighting and roaring thunder. I received about 0.53” of rain at my place. The initial lighting started a brush fire at the Arivaca Cienega and wind from the micro-burst blew the roof of a structure and the RV Park.
That’s the nature of these type storms in Arivaca.
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After I took this photo, it reminded me of an ambient-electronic musician I listen to; Jeff Grienke, who has a CD titled “Cities in Fog”. I took the photograph on a December morning in the Roosevelt section of downtown Phoenix.
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Scott Hellon of Point of View Pictures examining an edit to his feature film “Decision to Ask Why” at Psychotropic Film’s Phoenix ‘post’ studio downtown. Photo by Bart Santello
The adobe out-building got hammered last winter when an El Nino storm with 70 mph gusts and 5” of rain pummeled the west wall and collapsed it when a section of lime plaster fell off and exposed the adobe wall to the elements. After 6-months of every other weekend working to restore the out-building, I appreciate the level of effort required to reconstruct the damage, the lessons learned from it; and all the good friends that came through in a critical situation.
I was driving down the Arivaca Road at sunset a few nights back and Baboquivari Peak was looking good as the foreground to a beautiful early monsoon season sunset. So I pulled over and took this shot at 16x with my Panasonic Lumix FZ35 digital camera. I’m glad I did.