Rainy Days and Sunshine in Rapid City

I think we're now officially done with the rainy season in Rapid City.  It's been kind of fun to be here while they had torrential downpours, thunder and lightening on a daily basis.  It seemed like it was every night from about midnight to about 3 a.m. the storms would come in and then in the morning, you'd wake up to beautiful blue skies until later afternoon when dark clouds would start rolling back in.  Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. when I went to Prairie Edge it was blue skies with a couple white fluffy clouds and then an hour later, we had an afternoon downpour like no other!  It was so bad that even the store lights when out and the computers had to be reset causing a little headache for them.

Photo taken from upstairs at Prairie Edge on Main Street, Rapid City

An hour earlier...

Meanwhile, when the downpour came, Scott took these photos back at the rig.  A storm in a house is much different than one in an RV.  In an RV when it thunders, the whole rig shakes...kind of a weird feeling, but you get used to it after time.  When it pours rain like this, you hope and pray no plastic sunroof or air conditioner unit in the rig cracks and breaks.  We've had a couple days of hail and those days I really pray no damage is done to the rig or the truck.

Notice the red streak going down the road, that the red watery dirt from the top of the hill that makes a divot in the street where it's happened so much.  You can see how dark the photo above and and how light the one is below.  The darker one happens on the downpour afternoons while the lighter color happens with heavy rain.  Below are photos I took on another downpour afternoon.  You can see how the road has been patched up from rains past.

I'm not sure what the phenomenon is that caused the rain to come in every single afternoon and then downpour in the night, but it's been kind of fun to lay in bed and listen to the storms, see a flash of light and hear a big boom.  The dogs have just gotten used to it and even Roxy doesn't even flinch.  This past week were the worst ones we've had but I think they are now over and summer has officially come to Rapid City.  There was no storm last night and I checked the hourly forecast today for the next 10 days and there's nothing but sunshine and no rain in the forecast.  This is what we wake up to at about 5:30 a.m. every morning...just beautiful blue skies.  Simply gorgeous!

It's been an adventure being here this time of year.  I heard Lynelle at Prairie Edge tell another customer that they really didn't have much of a winter this past year but that they've had rain upon rain since May 1st.  She said it's been the greenest spring she can remember and I have to say the lime-green hills have been gorgeous!  Thanks, Black Hills, for the beautiful landscape!