More Rain

Lots of rain the past two days. We had rain last week for two days also. By lots, I mean on Mt. Charleston, about an hour north, there was 9.75 inches in one day. At the airport here, our official weather site, there was .12 inches over the two days. Notice the decimal point. LV gets a total of around three (3) inches a year in rain, so two days of clouds were noticeable. We usually have blinding sunshine. Even after the rain today I had to wear my shades on the drive home. So a grey sky is something different. Sounds real nice on my new tin roof out back though. Scares the dog, but he's a wimp anyway.
Here's what it looked like:

This is traveling down Desert Inn, headed west. This is my commute home from work. I live about three miles west of the strip, just off Desert Inn, and work about two miles east of the strip, on Sahara (the main road just north of Desert Inn). I usually travel from east to west across the valley on DI, as that is the only road that actually goes underneath Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) instead of negotiating through the traffic lights across it. Compared to other streets the time savings can be significant, especially during heavy tourist season when the streets are full. It's much easier now that there are pedestrian crossings at each major intersection on LV Blvd, but some of the streets do not yet have the crossings and traffic is slowed by the mobs crossing the street. Construction is under way where Spring Mountain crosses the strip. At this intersection is TI, the new Wynn, an expansion of the Venetian, and the Fashion Show Mall. It's about at the northern range of most tourists who walk up and down to see the casinos. The construction of the Wynn, and the new Venetian are prompting the construction of the pedestrian overpasses there. I guess it's part of the permit process for the big towers, to put aside land for the crossing. Most casinos on the corners tie the crossings right into the second floor of their buildings. This lets them suck people in who cross the street before they get back down to the ground.
We're about a mile and a half east of the strip in this photo, facing west. The big building close to the left, and extending across the road, is our main convention center. Off in the distance you can see the new Wynn hotel - looks like the tallest on the strip, except for the tower. And no sunshine.
Further down DI (Desert Inn) across 15 is this fine edifice, Jaguar's Gentlemen's Club.:

One of the newer topless bars I was talking about. I think the cover charge to get in is $20, plus drinks and of course tips and whatever you blow on lap dances. I've never been to one of these, so I don't know what an evening would cost. But you can see from how it looks like they must take in enough, kind of like having a fancy casino. You know it's paid for somehow.
This rain was probably a little less here, but since it was a lot colder Mt. Charleston had a different effect:

Looks nice? They usually have skiing on Thanksgiving weekend, but it might start earlier this year. I hear the resorts around Tahoe got a lot of snow also. I got the picture from our local paper, here is Review Journal article that I snitched the shot from. There are other photos there.
And finally, one of the nice things about storms is that clouds come with it. Usually our sky is a clear blue, without many clouds. But when not blocking the sun totally we get nice sunsets and sunrises. This is looking east from my front door. It doesn't have much color, but I liked the ripples in the clouds:


And if you didn't go to stupidvideos.com with the penguin, here is one commercial from Japan that I found to be highly amusing. Usually it's the guys on the beach doing this, but girls can be like that too.