With the Monsoon season officially starting in the Southwest on June 15th. Our attention focuses on the occasional Cumulus clouds we see forming above the mountains surrounding the Coachella Valley (typically late July through early September). With those clouds sometimes come thunderstorms with amazing lightning displays.

With that in mind comes and an amazing site with spectacular lightning photography:
Lightning Photography by Susan Strom

As stated on her website “Susan Strom, known in the Southwest as the “Lightning Lady”, is a photographer who specializes in lightning of the Arizona Desert, United States. Severe weather powered by the North American Monsoon is her favorite target, although she is also drawn by some of the compelling and mysterious images of the American west. She has photographed severe weather in 10 states.”

I hope you enjoy!

First things first… sorry about the lack of posts on the blog lately and the delay in replying to comments and e-mails. I have been quite busy this spring. Hopefully with the “slowdown” of summer I will be able to post more frequently.

An update on traffic, over the past 6 months DesertWeather.com has seen a nice and steady growth in people visiting the site. I’m consistently receiving e-mail from first time visitors and loyal visitors alike expressing opinions and asking questions. Thank you all.

I have a few ideas and features for this blog that I will be implementing over the next few months that will keep it “fresh” over periods of extend beautiful and calm weather that we typically see here in the Coachella Valley. The first, which the posts will be titled: “Link: then name of site“, will be a quick & simple post about an interesting site on the internet that is of course weather related. Keep in mind that it won’t always be related to the Coachella Valley but will highlight weather related graphs, photos, definitions, history, etc, etc.

Thanks again, and try to stay cool this summer,
John (founder)
John@DesertWeather.com

updated: I forgot to mention that a few of you might of noticed that the Photo Gallery has been offline for a few weeks now. This is due to the fact that I have not come up with a way yet to allow visitors to add their own photos and still fend off Spam successfully. It will be brought back online this week but no new photos will be allowed to be added for the foreseeable future, sorry!

On this day in…
2003: It was 116° in Palm Springs, 91° in Palomar Mountain, and 87° in Big Bear Lake, each the highest temperature on record for May. In Palm Springs this also occurred on 5.23.2001 and 5.28.1983. In Palomar Mountain this also occurred on 5.31.2001.
1990: A rare late-season storm brought record rainfall to most stations in Southern California.
1983: It was 116° in Palm Springs, the highest temperature on record for May. This also occurred on 5.28.2003 and 5.23.2001.
1953: Idyllwild recorded its latest measurable snowfall of the season on record with 0.5 inch.