We got RAIN!!!

We got rain yesterday...a LOT of it!  Rancho Mirage got 1.23 inches of rain yesterday afternoon.  Since we live on the border of Palm Desert/Rancho Mirage, I grabbed my camera and off I went to see the results.  I could hear sirens all around, coming and going.  You have to understand the desert:  Once the sandy soil gets saturated with water, it either stands and floods or it moves and floods somewhere else.  I KNOW...I've lived here nearly 40 years and I've seen two major tropical storms flood the desert.  One of them flooded our home in 1979.  Honestly, I haven't seen as much rain and water since 1979 as I saw yesterday afternoon.  Our front yard was completely saturated with rain water.  Really, it had nowhere to go...I did begin to worry about flooding, but we were okay...phew!  There's a large street 2 blocks over (my in-laws used to live there) and it was flooding.  A major spillway from the mountains ran down into it and it was closed to traffic.  A lot of its neighbors were out with their cameras and a news cameraman hopped out of a car to take video. I drove out to the Rancho Mirage library to check on the wash and yup...it was full and running with water.  There were high winds and rolling thunder for about an hour.  We called our kids in Indio and they got hit about 30 minutes after we did.  We are all okay, but more rain is forecast for today (in fact, it's already sprinkling).  It will be an interesting first day of school if it rains today!   :-)  These are the pics I took yesterday afternoon.