Rain in April?! And snow on Toro Peak? It’s like the wet season has migrated forward a couple of months. First it was a barely measurable 0.03 inches of rain in January, followed by a semi-measurable but still paltry 0.21 inches in February. So it was no great surprise that our wildflower bloom had pretty much petered out by the time we finally got three inches during the entire month of March, including a nice dumping of nearly an inch and a half on the 12th. But those rains, combined with cool morning temps, appeared to have retarded rigorous blooms just as wildflowers started to bloom.

With COVID-19 raging around the world, that turned out to be a blessing as far as tourism hordes in Borrego were concerned. Even the local Bloom Report was put on hiatus so as not to encourage folks to come see what is essentially absent from our desert.

As March melded into April, minimum morning temperatures remained in the mid-40s to the mid-70s, but we did have some warm days between April 1 – 6. But on April 7, cooler temperatures came back, along with four days of rain totaling 1.2 inches as measured at the Park HQ rain gauge.

Park rain gauge data on the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park website goes back all of seven years, and during that span, we haven’t had so much as a drop of April rain in three years; in April 2016 we got what could be described (quasi-meteorologically) as a “mist of 0.07 inches” showing up. One had to go back to April 2014 to tally up less than 0.3 inches of rain that month.

So why all the rain in Borrego during April, with snowcapped peaks to boot? Haven’t got a clue, folks.

We were hoping for warmer weather by now to help drive those devilish COVID-19 critters into having a massive heat stroke, but we’re going to have to wait for that, according to AccuWeather.

In the days after this issue makes its way to our readers, it will be a mix of partly sunny skies with temperatures in the 70s, but perhaps with a little shower tossed in for good measure. After about April 15, we’re in for temperatures above 80-degrees in the foreseeable future.

We’re not used to pining for hot weather, but the exception to the rule applies when we’re dealing with a virus that doesn’t survive in our desert heat.