Watter Spotters

The Sunshine Under The Rainbow!

We had a one-two punch storm here over the past few days.  It's been a warm rainstorm with a snow level so high it was irrelevant.  That rain fell on the snowpack "up top" as we Valley People say.  Naturally, rain-on-snow has a pretty predictable result, like it flash melts the snow and all that snowmelt follows the Law of Gravity and runs downhill like a scared cat being chased by hungry coyote.

Naturally, the washes, creeks and our one and only river have responded by pumping gobs of water through their channels.  Susun and we have been out doing what we love--being Watter Spotters.  We spent four hours on the road Saturday and another couple of hours yesterday.  We'll probably go out again today "just because."

Saturday's trip was sopping wet as it was still raining hard and we both got soaked from all the times we leaped from the truck to point and giggle in glee about this or that spectacular piece of foaming, thundering water.  We saw more waterfalls leaping off the sheer cliffs of Oak Creek than we'd ever seen before.  Of course, the Big Daddy Encinoso was in rare form and easily the plumpest, fullest we'd witnessed in over 30 years.

As we write this, the Verde River is trying to peak at "ten five."  That's river lingo for 10,500 cubic feet per second.  We've had a wonderful weekend being Watter Spotters.  It's been years since we've had a great runoff event to fuel our fancy for frothy runoff.  There's nothing like a nice rainstorm on a snowpack to get both the water and our adrenalin pumping.

Susun wanted to make sure she had "a waterfall over her shoulder."