Now I know another reason why it's so hard to grow food in a desert: wiiiiiiiiiiiiind. We had gusts up to 50 or 60 (again) the other day.

We've had three 100-degree days so far, and yesterday it hit 102. K's car said it was 111 in his parking lot at work at 5:30 pm.

So far, because the humidity remains very low, it's pretty easy to handle. You can't go hiking unless you leave extremely early (to allow for 1 hour to cross the border), though, and it's best not to run errands in the afternoon. Up to 95 degrees is easy, but your face turns bright red from the heat when it's 100 and over. Only 3-4 more months of summer to go!

I actually spent 5 or 6 hours in bed the first weekend of June from not drinking enough water. I ran errands in the car Friday and Saturday afternoon. I think it was 95 one day and higher the next. Since then, I don't drive anywhere without a can of water in the cupholder.

On the plus side, the dogs are a lot quieter during the day these days...

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Ooh, we had a big wind and rain storm last night. Mucho flooding. So what happens when certain neighborhoods get too much precipitation? The water goes out in the houses, of course!

Traffic jams in some parts of the city were biblical this morning. Driving to work, I came across a puddle that was more than 5 lanes wide. It covered an entire intersection. At a 4.5-lane-wider, a bus driving by threw water high enough to cover a small car.

Hail-damaged cars are still on sale at dealerships in El Paso from the last hailstorm. Some colonias got a little more last night, too.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Uh, oh -- it was still 90 degrees at 9 o'clock tonight. I think summer has arrived....

Can't we have normal rainstorms, like everywhere else?

We should have known to expect bad weather last week, after washing the car for the first time in months. It's kind of pointless to wash it often, as it just get covered in dust days later. (seriously, people DUST THEIR CARS here) But the tiny bits of road tar should come off periodically. So wash it we did. And the next day: rain, hail and tornadoes. Even though it only rains about once every six weeks here, and then only very briefly.

It hailed on and off for almost a half-hour. Hail about the size of an eye. Luckily, our car happened to be under a roof at work, and the two tornadoes were elsewhere in El Paso County. But the rain turns the area dust into .... mud. And the car got filthy on the drive home.

So this past weekend, K. went at it again. The car sparkled anew. And then Monday night, all of Juarez awoke at 3 a.m. to a hailstorm to end all hailstorms. Eye-sized hail again. There was so much of rain and hail piled up on our back patio, it looked a cranberry farm when they float the berries out of the bogs. Amazingly, some were still there the next morning. (we went back to bed at 4)

So now the car is black again, and will probably stay dirty for a long while. Most of the giant puddles on the roads have dried up. I spent a lot of time Tuesday morning trying to figure out the safest way to work. I opted for the route with the lowest speed limit -- wise choice. There were only a few potholes that would have swallowed a non-SUV wheel.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Drove to work for the first time last week. Was surprised to see what appeared to be the whole police force standing at major intersections. To expedite morning and afternoon/evening rush hour, each busy intersection gets one cop, who waves traffic on even when the light is red, if it makes sense. Where the U.S. uses computers to reset and reroute rush-hour traffic, Juarez does it by hand -- ha ha ha.

Though temperatures at night are still deceptively cool, it is getting hot during the day. In a parking lot yesterday afternoon, our car's computer said that the outside temperature was 100 degrees F. Strangely, it seemed cooler than the day last week that the computer read 95 degrees.

In fact, the temperature in our house -- I should say temperatureS -- are weird. Our house boasts three temperatures: one downstairs, another upstairs, and yet a third in the master bedroom. It isn't a good thing. The fact that the downstairs has a tiled floor and is mostly blocked from the sun by the 15-foot wall means that it feels 5 to 10 degrees cooler than upstairs. And requires you to wear a sweater and socks. The master bedroom, because it faces south and west, feels 5 to 10 degrees hotter than the rest of the upstairs. And requires you to take off your sweater if you're coming from downstairs.

The biggest problem is when we turn on the air conditioning at night to cool off the bedroom before going to sleep. (our landlord was too cheap to put in dual-thermostat system) You freeze downstairs while waiting for the bedroom to cool off upstairs.

The dry air in the area also means that your daytime driving outfit (t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops) is way too skimpy once the sun goes down, even if the daytime high was in the upper 80s, as it was yesterday. You need a sweater, too, to sit outside at night. Not that anyone in Juarez does, though. That would require rubbing off the day's dust, a chore few people want to do at least twice every day...

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

MSN Money yesterday reported that Juarez is "the largest center for maquila production" in Mexico, and the second-largest in the world. Let's hope that it all doesn't blow away. Yesterday's big wind storm continues today, at speeds of 50 m.p.h. When you live next to a junkyard and drive an SUV, however, it seems worse than that. This is going to be one of those stay-home-if-you-can days.

The wind has brought more trash into the yard than usual. This morning, in addition to the usual candy wrappers from neighborhood kids, we have a styrofoam tray that used to hold meat, wrapping paper, and tape. In El Paso, realtors are having trouble selling new houses because the porches keep filling up with tumbleweeds and the yards with debris.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/