Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California,

now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

A great windstorm blew through the high desert, great cloud ships on the eastern horizon.

All very exciting until that L.A. haze and grimy smog blew through the paths and up the grade.

Ozone and all the rest.

We're going to build a wall and we're going to make Los Angeles pay for it.

When is spring in the high desert anyway?

From about late January to early June, on and off, generally speaking, sometimes it starts in October the year before.

The Joshua trees start blooming early.

Sometimes you leave your coat in the car

till summer solstice

because the weather can play tricks.

Until about August,

when you'd be glad for some tricks like that.

Something besides 100 degree plus days at last half the night.

You might pay somebody good money to summon a monsoon rainstorm.

There were Pentecostal preachers in that line of work, traveling rain wizards.

The Indian tribes of the West had their own rain wizards, and some still do, doing the rain dance.

There's a Tanya Tucker song about the former, the rain preacher.

Personally, I would look at the 10-day forecast before paying any kind of rain bringer.

I would, in fact, have my own personal weather station, the data shared with the Weather Underground Network,

...