Thunderheads

One element of San Diego County weather in late July and most of August is the piling up of clouds upon clouds in the eastern skies. San Diego County is a bit of an oddity weather-wise as within 50 miles the elevation goes from sea level up to mesas, down into inland valleys, then out to mountains of 6,000 feet elevation. On the backside of the mountains, the elevations drops again to an elevation of 500 feet across the California desert to the Arizona border. But as moist air from the Arizona summer monsoons twirls over the desert and then up over the mountains, the resulting thunderheads can be seen across the entire county.

E. took these photos from inside my little '91 Toyota as we climbed up and up in elevation, nearing the 4000 feet of elevation in which our small town resides. The clouds often deluge the small mountain towns in summertime, sometimes extending even into the inland valleys, but despite amazing clouds that look so promising of rain, we've had very little precipitation this summer, and no downpours at all. Our town is brittle-dry, unfortunately ready to spark into the terrifying fires that endanger our area each September and October when the Santa Ana winds sweep westward across the county, bringing air so dry that humidity drops to single digits.

So we continue to pray that gorgeous clouds such as these will dump buckets o' rain on us very soon to prevent our town from being quite the tinderbox it is at present.