I thought it would be worth noting (especially for those of you here in San Pancho today) that we had an inch of rain this morning. And most of it came down from just before 7 a.m. to about 7:30 am.
While the rain started sometime just after 6, the real downpour came around 7 o’clock, when the rain rate got up to 5.24 inches/per hour! But that downpour lasted only a brief time, as you can see from the data snippet below.
It’s these heavy, brief downpours that often make us think intuitively that we’ve had a lot more rain than the actual amount. But it is also a reminder that such a high rain rate is what causes flooding and other environmental destruction. It needn’t last long to be destructive.
A case in point this morning is the storm drain at the Hospital end of Calle Africa here in San Pancho, across the street from my favorite taco stand. The run-off from the hills behind the hospital come down a concrete sluice and go into the storm drain. Rain last week filled that drain with silt, so rain water was again flowing down Africa toward Avenida Tercer Mundo.
The storm drain was emptied of silt Saturday. But by 9 this (Monday) morning, the drain was filled and the mighty Rio Africa was filled with water again! Which, in turn filled the newly repaved Tercer Mundo with water. Which now flows down to the only new storm drain in the entire street repaving project at Tercer Mundo at the corner of ‘domino park’!
I digress.
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- Sept 14 – First column is time of reading, last column is rain rate per hour; click on photo for larger image.
