Fall rains and climate change

We are getting our first taste of fall around these parts. It has up until yesterday been warm and sunny which is very typical for our fall weather. We don't have the classic indian summer you hear Midwesterners speak about. We get shortening days and crisp cool nights interrupted by the occasional storms out of the northwest. It is one of the things that draws the snowbirds to our location. Many like the Bisbee area because we do have a four season climate. The nice feature to our seasons is that they are not too intense and when there is an extreme of weather you can count on it changing in three to four days.
We need every drop of rain that comes our way. As I travel the highways and byways of our county I am seeing deeper and more graphic evidence of changing weather patterns.
Take the mighty cottonwood for example. Although not a native to all parts of Arizona it is a rather ubiquitous feature to low Sonora desert landscape if water is available. The road to Elfrida was lined with stately cottonwoods topping 50 feet when I was young. I remember the ride to Grizzel's peach orchards to pick fruit for canning. We would frequently stop under one of these majestic trees for a picnic lunch after picking a hundred or so pounds of fresh peaches. One of my most vivid memories is sitting in the shade of those trees, on the dusty berm of an irrigation ditch, eating a warm fresh peach with the sticky juice running down my forearms. That drive is now relentlessly sunny and only the bones of one or two trees toppled by the roadbed remain. The climate is changing, after all - climate is what you hope for and weather is what you get!
The cottonwoods can no longer sink their roots into life giving water.



They stand as silent, powerful, testaments to what is happening in our world.