Phoenix South Mountain Preserve is one of the largest city parks in the world, at 16,000 acres or so. It's usually bleak-looking mountainsides normally have typical scrubby growth of the most hardy desert plants, such as creosote bushes, lots of cactus. Normally, South Mountain looks pretty much like the upper left slope in this pic. Our first spring living about 1/4 mile from where my wife took this pic, almost the entire mountain slope, within a few day's time, turned a brilliant orange color. Not quite understanding, we hiked over to the closest slope: millions upon millions of flowers, all of the same type, we learned later they are "California Poppies", absolutely left us speechless! We two Midwestern hicks, transplants to the ruggedness of the desert, had no idea that at times, it could put on a show unequalled elsewhere! That guy is me, gaping in wonder, dressed in my usual "informal garb", which had not yet "rotted off". Undated, this was likely in March, of certainly 1980. Every 100 or so flowers, was to be found a red one! The "black" sheep mutants? The winter had produced unusually heavy rainfall and snowfall in the areas where water for the Phoenix area is entrapped by a series of 5 dams. In reality, there were 3 one-hundred year floods in 3 consecutive years! Billion to one odds. Nature at work, again. The first occurred in 1978. '79, again, when we had already moved there. That one produced flood-released water flow into the normally dry Salt River, which cuts diagonally across the entire PHX metro area, of such magnitude it took out all but 2 of the "river crossing" bridges, or culverts as it were, cutting off traffic from PHX, north of the river, to the cities south of it, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert. The flow rate peaked in the Salt at 160,000 cubic feet per second; compare that to the maximum ever recorded rate in the Colorado River, which was used to predict Hoover Dam strength and height, of 100,000 cfs. We saw huge logs, cars, debris of all kinds, being brutally carried away by the flow.
There is much more historical info to add to this story, but safe to say, the desert is a "harsh master", which takes unusual strength to overcome. imp
The poppy seeds had lain dormant for years, we heard, awaiting a precip. event of unusual amount. This was the result. No poppy plants could be seen at all, two months later! Reports stated that S. Mt. produced poppy blooming about every ten years. S. Mt. is 1,000 ft. higher in altitude than PHX. Our second winter there, it received several inches of snow overnight! Gone by 10:00 AM!
There is much more historical info to add to this story, but safe to say, the desert is a "harsh master", which takes unusual strength to overcome. imp
The poppy seeds had lain dormant for years, we heard, awaiting a precip. event of unusual amount. This was the result. No poppy plants could be seen at all, two months later! Reports stated that S. Mt. produced poppy blooming about every ten years. S. Mt. is 1,000 ft. higher in altitude than PHX. Our second winter there, it received several inches of snow overnight! Gone by 10:00 AM!
