“Well, immediately around the city of Yuma we have a lot of agriculture land and it looks like we’ll end up with about two to three million dollars in crop damage. It only takes a little water to damage these crops and we got a lot.”

The crops that need water were destroyed, but how did the plants that don’t need water, the ones in the dessert, reacted to such a torrent.

“Out in the desert, you know, outside of town, the flowers were in bloom because of the rain. But what was kind of ironic was that with all that rain we just received, we could see sand storms from our office. Just a couple of hours after the driving rain ended, water was still running in the washes and draining basins were over flowing. But once the rain quit, the wind dried everything out and the sand started to blow.”

The desert itself has spent a long time learning how to be a dessert and when what we in moist climates see as necessary rain shows up, the dessert dramatically repels it and immediately goes back to being a desert, with sandstorms, and with a little extra flowery color. Our show is produced in cooperation with New Hampshire Public Radio. Support comes from the National Science Foundation and from Subaru the beauty of all wheel drive.