Monsoons are finally here! Check out this weather forecast below-this is what I was waiting for!
I will be taking the row covers OFF! my tomato plants this weekend.
With the cooler temperatures and rain predicted everyday for the next 10 days, it appears that the monsoon pattern has set up. Best news in quite a while! People might wonder why I get so excited over rain patterns out here in New Mexico but if we didn’t get the monsoon pattern in the summer, it would be miserably hot as we all just experienced with the 100°F days we experienced. Not unbearable heat like in Arizona but still hot for us and being a native Phoenician, I remember how hot it can get. I even tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk in Phoenix when I was a kid (it didn’t fry but evaporated instead.)
Can’t wait to see the tomato girls without having to peek inside the row covers. Hmm, I wonder if I have more tomatoes ready to eat under those row covers…
giantveggiegardener 
Yeah! So glad it is cooling and the rains are coming. I am ready. Only a few drops here so far though. I do have a tomato question from a neighbor who seems to have some mushy spots. Any way I can send you a pic for some help? It does not seem to be impacting all her tomatoes luckily.
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Hi Sylvia! Yes send me a pic and I’ll try to help. Its not blossom end rot is it? That would be on the bottom of the tomato or sometimes tomatoes can get sunburned and get soft spots which wouldn’t surprise me with the heat we had.
Send pic to: jcabossel@hotmail.com
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Does not look like blossom end rot. Just sent you the pic. I’ve seen this before but don’t know the cause.
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RAD! It is the middle of summer, and you are getting rain!!!
It still seems odd to me though.
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I’m guessing you don’t get rain in the summer? We get monsoons that come up from Mexico in the summers and cool us down immensely. Good thing as I’m fried between the CV and the heat. We could use rain and it looks like it is here!
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Once the rain stops in spring, it does not resume until autumn. I know other climates get a bit of rain through the year, but I still can not imagine monsoons.
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Hi Tony!
Well it’s not usually like a deluge of rain all at once but rather a weather pattern from Mexico that sets up for us in New Mexico. It comes sometime in July (this year it came about a week late) and usually last into late August and sometimes last till Sept. I looked it up-we get 30-40% of our rain (we average get 14″ of rain per year) during the monsoon season. When it’s here, the days usually start off sunny with a few clouds that keep building up and then we get thunderstorms in the afternoons and quite often in early evening we get more spectacular lightening storms-Great big thunderstorms with lots of lightening and thunder. I love summers here when the monsoons come in. Plus it really cools down in temperature which is a godsend and our nights are in the 60’s.
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Wow, so your region only gets about the same amount of rain that the Santa Clara Valley gets. If 30-40% of it falls in summer, your winters get only about 60-70% of the total, which means your winters are significantly drier, even though the rainfall is the same. So, the monsoons are like a pattern of summer thundershowers. I have seen summer thundershowers, but they are very rare here.
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That is correct. We do get around 26″ of snow in winter though so that makes up the 60-70% of other moisture. We always hope for good snow falls as that’s what keeps our forests from getting fires in summers.
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