Weather in the desert seems mostly a dry subject.  The usual history of Palm Springs mostly starts in a dry spell at the end of the 19th century when the little sprouting village planted by John McCallum at the base of Mt. San Jacinto desiccated and nearly perished despite all his efforts to bring water from Tahquitz Canyon and Whitewater via extensive flumes.  The drought lasted some 11 years when the aptly named Weather Bureau noted in 1901 a dying tropical cyclone brought “two inches of rain to the mountains and deserts of Southern California” ending the dry spell that nearly ended Palm Springs itself. In the desert, when it finally rains, many times, it pours.  But perhaps the most famous and influential deluge in the history of the Coachella Valley didn’t occur here at all.  In 1905, heavy rainfall in the Colorado River basin caused the river to swell and eventually breach a foolishly naïve Imperial Valley irrigation dike.
-Written by Tracy Conrad, special to the Desert Sun.