Fire and Floods

I'm going to give you a bit of whiplash by taking you back to the summer on this post. I wanted to document this for my personal library too :)
During the summer we had some noteworthy, incredible isolated thunderstorms. This ignited a fire in the Mt. Moriah Wilderness area, called Hampton Creek. Here is the fire from my yard. After the fire was contained the rains came and so did the disastrous flash floods in that area. Flash flooding became the theme toward the end of summer. We had a dry winter, so maybe it was trying to make it up? Geeeeez.......

We had dry days on end, however when it did rain ~ it was measurable amounts. At times I couldn't believe the amount of water that poured from the sky! The neat thing about the Great Basin is that you can see where the weather is, whether moving across the valley or pounding the mountains. It really is a beautiful sight, as long as you aren't inconvenienced from it ;) 

On my Friday commutes to Ely, I try to remember to take my camera. It's been forgotten many times. However, I was able stop on the side of the road and capture the sky with my iPhone.

This system looked like a grey vail moving across the valley.......

These next two photos were taken by my cousin, Janille, who took photos on her trips to town.
You better take those flooding signs seriously ;) 

When it wasn't pouring and the sun was shining, the rainbows were a pretty display in the sky......

I have to admit, the thunder that crashed surprised me a few times. I can't remember the last time I heard a clap of thunder that loud! Just like that, water would pour from the sky. My gutters tried to keep up, but overflowed easily. The driveway filled up with water in minutes, and I watched wide-eyed and said to myself,"Ok, you can stop now." These photos don't do it justice. my driveway ended up all water.......

Here is what the bottom of the gutter looked like; I thought it was foamy water.......

Then I took a closer look. Hail in August (at 5,000 ft)..... you don't see that too often.

Because of these memorable thunderstorms bringing crazy amounts of pools of water to the desert ~ it revived the "living fossils," or Triops. 
What are Triops? I'll explain those on my next post ;)

The flooding in our valley was a hot topic of course. You can learn more and see great pics on the blogs below:
Here is my friend Gretchen's blog post 
My cousin Janille's blog post