October 2013 Blue Duck Weather News

October 2013 Weather News!

This is the thirty year anniversary of the historic Great Maricopa flood that made national headlines and cut off your truly and his little family from the cities for a week.

It was not the amount of rain that fell in Maricopa that late September and early October in 1983 that flooded the tiny town and surrounding areas. In the southern and eastern portion of the state it rained for days. Safford, Arizona recorded twelve inches of rain in ten days as a result of remnants from Tropical Storm Octave. The subsequent runoffs funneled from the high ground to the east and to the south toward rural Pinal County with Maricopa in the crosshairs. There were even grave concerns that Coolidge Dam to the east would not be able to take the pressure of the flooding and that it may fail.

When all was said and done 14 people were killed in the state, thousands injured and the damage to homes and property was estimated at one billion dollars.

On October 3rd, 1983 the flood roared into town, at that time a population of 250 residents. (Hard to believe looking at Maricopa now.) No one believed floods would breach the Santa Rosa Wash but they did. Water engulfed the only school in town, the restaurant and everything south of the railroad tracks. When the water arrived “it changed everything.”

Some reported a wall of water seven feet high. Folks scrambled to turn off electricity and warn neighbors. Soon, families climbed onto the roofs of their homes awaiting rescue. It wasn’t just the water that was dangerous. There were snakes, rats and floating debris in the water.

The Arizona National Guard sent soldiers to help move in supplies and Pinal County Sheriffs moved deputies into the area to help with search and rescue operations.

Cleanup of the K-12 school took six weeks. Homes had two feet of mud in them. One man said he will never forget looking back to the east from town and seeing a “solid sheet of wet, glistening mud for as far as I could see.”

On that October day before the floods roared through every wash north and south of town the Lovely young Mrs. Blueduck had been tipped that the water was coming. She drove sixteen miles to the nearest pay phone (we had no home phone then as there was no phone service available yet on The Land), and called my boss in Phoenix. He radioed me that I better get home (there were not cell phones than and office to truck communication was by radio.). Heading home as fast as I dared I could see engineers on the tiny bridges spanning washes north of Maricopa. Maricopa Road was a dangerous two lane road full of dips, potholes and occasional wild horses wandering into traffic. The engineers were ready to close the road as I made it southbound.

Fortunately our little nest was sixteen miles south of Maricopa so no flood waters came this far south. But what cut us off from work, Phoenix and Casa Grande were closed interstate bridges. I-8 was closed to the south. I-10 was closed to the east over the Gila River. There was no Maricopa Road at its juncture with the Gila as it was completely washed out.

The one store to get supplies was a tiny little commissary on the Reservation north of us. They were rationing eggs, milk, gas and bread. Looking back we did just fine, our little family of four riding the flood out.

But what about the next time? Maricopa now has a population of sixty thousand people thirty years later. The Army Corps of Engineers took to the sky in the days after the flood, observing how the water spread out and making plans to improve the area washes and bridges to prevent wider flooding in the future.

The Santa Rosa Wash was widened after the flood, which helped diminish the damage from another “hundred year flood” ten years later in 1993. But one long time Maricopa resident said recently “You can’t predict anything.” All I know is this many people later in Maricopa and another flood like 1983 would be a national disaster.


It seems javelinas made a lot of news in the early part of the month in Arizona, none of it any good being the victims of man or vehicle. Also read about a freak, tragic accident on a Colorado hiking trail, ‘’Super smog”, “A Super Typhoon”, where road kill is now legal to take for food, and so much more in this jam packed exciting issue of Blue Duck Weather!

But first it is necessary to get weather statistics out of the way. It was nineteen degrees cooler on The Land at the end of the month than the beginning with an average temperature of 68.79 degrees due to a cold front that passed through.

Talking Trees and Antelope Hill had and average temperature of 46.08 degrees, also nineteen degrees cooler at the end of the month due to the same cold front that affected Arizona temperature.

Not a fucking drop of rain fell in the month of October on The Land or for most of the state.

And that brings us to the shrinking, although steady, lake levels. Mead is 46% full, Powell 45% full, Pleasant 52% and Roosevelt 45% full.


10-2- Tons of jellyfish force one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors to shut down in Sweden.

A man and his wife from the lowest lying nation on earth is trying to convince judges in New Zealand that he is a refugee from climate change. They left six years ago for higher ground due to rising seas.

10-3- The first named winter storm of the season (you read it first in Blue Duck Weather last year. The National Weather Service believe if they name threatening storms, like hurricanes, people will pay more attention to the potential harm they cause.) Atlas will bring snow to parts of the northern Rockies.

Wandering javelinas keep a school locked down near 51st Street and Thomas in Phoenix until Arizona Game & Fish relocate them.

And in a separate incident 10 javelinas found dead at an intersection in north east Scottsdale struck by cars. Two babies a few weeks old found on top of dead mamas trying to nestle.

A father and four family members killed on a hiking trail in Colorado by rolling, massive boulders. A 13 year old girl survived and said Dad shielded her. The boulders weighing as much as one hundred tons left a slide gash the size of a football sleeve on the mountain.

10-4- Tropical Storm Karen threatening the Gulf Coast and mandatory evacuations in Louisiana due to storm surges three to five feet high.

A tornado destroys homes in north east Nebraska near Wayne.

A blizzard warning is issued in six states including Wyoming and South Dakota with 70mph winds.

A high today of 89 degrees in Phoenix, cooler than Washington, DC.

10-5- Record breaking four feet of snow in portions of South Dakota. Rapid City received 19’’, the most on this day since 1919.

80mph Santa Anna Winds blow into Southern California.

10-6- “Without warning”. Flash flooding in Kentucky prompts 80 emergency rescues and 75 roads closed. Seven inches of rain in 36 hours ties old record.

The tornado that hit Wayne, Nebraska has been confirmed as an EF4 with 170mph winds.

10-8- Typhoon Fitow slams eastern China with a staggering 574,000 evacuations and 35,800 sea vessels called to shore. One man died when he was blown off a hill while trying to help rescue a stranded fisherman.

And blame it on the fucking federal government shutdown: Colorado River runner permit holders denied scheduled launch dates will receive refunds. They will be allowed to schedule with choice of dates until 2016 and they have ninety days to apply.

10-9- Snow Advisory in northern Arizona above 6500’. Dust Storm Warning for the valley until 7:00pm. (Yours truly got caught in this mess heading south on Maricopa Road. It was one of the few times I had to pull completely off the road, turn off the lights and take my foot off the brake so someone wouldn’t plow into the back of me. The visibility was zero and when I finally got back on the road I could see several cars piled up on the opposite side of the road. I couldn’t see or hear the crash but there was debris all over the highway.)

Typhoon Fitow closes 60 parks and a zoo in Beijing. The single day total of rain was 6’’, the most since 1961.

10-10- Twenty degrees below normal around Arizona with a high of only 71 degrees on The Land. Flagstaff received 3.5’’ of snow breaking a record of 1’’ for this date.

Montana Fish and Wildlife approve regulations to allow people to go on line for permits to salvage road kill for food. The animals they hit with a vehicle “accidentally” will be fare game for the table if they apply within 24 hours of the kill. ( Some rednecks I know would just consider this another form of “hunting.”)

10-11- Super Cyclone Phailin is forming into a Category 5 hurricane and is the biggest weather system on earth today. (That is saying a lot!.)

A 56 year old Tucson man is crushed to death when the side of a wash caved in while he and a friend were looking for rocks and minerals. His friend walked for miles to reach authorities. It took them two hours to arrive to the site and two hours to dig him out of two to three feet of rock and sand.

A zookeeper who worked there for 30 years was killed by an elephant in south east Missouri. It is not believed the elephant attacked the man but merely “brushed” against him

10-12- Super Cyclone Phailin is said to be a humanitarian disaster. It is as broad as Hurricane Katrina was and has a foot print the size of France. As it strikes India twelve million people will be affected. One hundred and fifty mile per hour winds with twenty to thirty foot storm surges 800,000 evacuated.

A reward up to five thousand dollars is being offered by Arizona Game & Fish for information leading to the arrest of anyone who killed ten javelinas found near Saguaro National Park in Tucson. It is not clear if the pigs weres shot as all the meat was taken.

A 27 year old man has fallen to his death off Midgley Bridge in Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona. He fell two hundred feet to the canyon floor and investigators think it was suicide. His vehicle was found stopped on the bridge with the driver’s side door open. Sheriffs found a bedroom slipper near the car.

10-13- Phailin claims 13 souls in India. Early evacuations are credited for more lives not being lost. Damage to crops estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

A seventy two year old deer hunter, lost for 19 days in the rugged mountains of northern California is rescued by other hunters and carried out on a make shift stretcher. It was not unusual for him to separate from his hunting partner for a few hours but somehow he managed to stumble and was unconscious he believes for an entire day. He survived by shooting small game with his rifle and packing leaves and dry grass on himself to stay warm. He also stayed close to water.

10-14- Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort in Colorado is the first to open in the nation this season.

10-15- Up to four feet of snow fell in parts of Black Hills, North Dakota last week killing ten to twenty thousand head of cattle. The vast majority of ranchers do not have insurance. One rancher lost over a thousand head of cattle and had to to bury them in a massive grave.

You read it here first several months ago about moose dying off in Michigan but now it seems it is spreading. From British Columbia to New Hampshire moose are dying and the speculation is stress from warmer temperatures, parasites and ticks. Up to one hundred thousand ticks can hide in the thick hair of a single moose.

10-16- Chinese rescuers evacuate 86 ‘tourists” from Mount Everest after they were stranded by heavy snow. They were about to return after “sightseeing” at the mountain’s North Base Camp. (Call me naïve or having a fixed image of the hardships climbers have endured on this mighty mountain but is hard to relate to recreational “tours” on this mighty mountain.)

10-17- Typhoon Wipha grounds hundreds of Tokyo flights. On one island thirty inches of rain fell in 24 hours. There are seventeen missing, fifty dead and three hundred and fifty homes destroyed.

10-18- Major wildfires burning in New South Wales in Australia; one thousand evacuated and two hundred homes burned.

10-19- Nearly thirty separate wildfires, twenty two out of control burning in the Blue Mountains of Australia. 193 homes have been destroyed and 109 damaged.

10-20- State of Emergency declared and fires in Australia have consumed 200 homes and has burned 180 square miles.

Tropical Storm Raymond has formed and moving toward Mexico’s southern Pacific coast. This area is still in bad shape after Manuel last month. Ten thousand people are still evacuated from flooded homes and landslide risks.

80 percent of Colorado’s roads have been repaired since the historic flooding last month. There were worries that roads would not be repaired before winter snow started to arrive. But Glen Haven, Colorado is still a “ghost town” and inaccessible.

10-21- The fires in Australia are now the size of Los Anegels.

Raymond is now a Category 3 hurricane.

10-22- The fires burning in Australia now reach one thousand miles. The initial fire began during a military training exercise.

Raymond stalls and is downgraded but still producing heavy rain on the Mexican coast.

“Super smog” blankets Harbin, China and visibility is down to half of a football field. Small particle pollution is 40 times higher than international safety standards. One resident said “I couldn’t see anything out of my apartment window and thought it was snowing.”

10-23- At ninety five degrees today Phoenix the hottest city in the nation. (What a lovely honor to have!)

10-24- A huge landslide covers part of a road in Denali National Park, Alaska. A two hundred foot stretch of the road is covered with 30,000 yards of rock and soil from five hundred feet above the road.

Arctic temperatures the warmest in the last century than in the last 40,000 years. (I don’t care whether you believe in global warming or not, this is alarming!)

A 169 pound catfish is caught on the Ebro River in Spain. The man that caught the lug, or maybe the fish caught him, was fishing from an inner tube and was drug for a mile. He said several times his tiny inner tube was about to be pulled underwater.

10-26- Days of torrential rains in India have left 39 dead with 70,000 evacuated!

A fully intact 76 pound deer found inside of a 16 foot Burmes python in the Florida Everglades.

10-27- Millions in England and Wales are told to prepare for heavy rains and hurricane force winds from a storm unofficially named St. Jude.

10-28- Thirteen dead, mostly from fallen trees and 270,000 without power. 90 mph winds pound the Isle of Wight.

60mph winds in Show Low Arizona and the snow level expected to drop to 7500 feet.

10-29- The most deadly stretch of an Arizona highway when the dirt blows; A short but very dense dust storm on I-10 near Pichacho Peak causes a nineteen vehicle pile up that kills three and twelve injured. The freeway was closed in both directions for six hours.

Rain and snow in Flagstaff, Arizona. A Freeze Warning is issued for Mohave County.

10-30- One hundred acre Whiting Fire burning east of Show Low near the New Mexico border. The cause is unknown.

10-31- Heavy rain and flooding cancels Halloween in portions of Texas. High wind warnings issued in 16 states. The barometric pressure will drop to a Category 2 hurricane level. Twelve to fourteen foot seas on Lake Erie.
There you have it my fine readers, another staggering edition of Blue Duck Weather! But wait, this is a bonus month and we shall leave you with two quotes for the month:

“Listening I could hear
Within myself the snow
That was coming, the sound
Of a loud, cold trumpet-
John Haines, Poem for a Cold Journey 1966.

And a viwpoint on Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River: “It made a hell of a lot better river than it does a Reservoir.” River guide and long time rafter, Richard Quest.

Until next month, and hopefully you won’t find yourself inside a sixteen foot Burmese Python, remember Pioneers took bullets. Settlers took land.


The Distinguished Professor MR Blue Duck.