but I do miss those thunderstorms every many days. A lot.
Cass is me. Well, these days I bargain with nature for t-storms to not interrupt my swim, but I do miss the storms you could set a watch by, the smell of mesquite and creosote and wet ozone. I miss watching the wall approach and the air cooling and standing in the cold runoff in the gutters.
Right now, my parents are dreading the monsoons. Fires haven't been so bad in their area that they have serious flood concerns, but the bad freeze this winter killed a lot of vegetation . My parents are hauling off dumpsters of dead cuttings. Won't know until next spring really if some of the vegetation made it. Some of the massive 50ft pines are questionable, and some of their massive mexican elders have had to be pruned back to stumps. With that and the drought, monsoons bring lightning, lightning means more fires. It's going to be a rough monsoon season.
When I think of what the freeze did to their xeriscaped yard, it makes me want to cry. That's stuff that we planted largely in the first 5 years they lived there, so it is 15-20 years of growth. And it was gorgeous and native. And 2-4 days of seriously fucked up cold (froze utility plants, caused blackouts, loss of gas pressure) killed a lot of it. Thousands of dollars in their mere 1/3 acre. The smaller stuff is easier to replace. The big trees, nsm.