The best news is that traffic congestion has been eliminated on Tegner Street at the junction of US-60 and US-93. The two photos were taken on Friday, October 2nd between 12:00 and 1:00 pm. This is a time when the Las Vegas – Phoenix traffic coincides with local lunchtime drivers and parents who are picking up their children from the elementary school south of West Wickenburg Way.

Figure 1 was taken from the overpass just west of Tegner, next to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. As you can see, there were only a few cars on Wickenburg Way. The traffic light now seems to favor East-West vehicles with a shorter red light interval.

Figure 1, View from West Wickenburg Way Looking East

Figure 2 was taken a few minutes later from Tegner Street looking south toward the intersection. Before the Bypass became operational it was common to see traffic backed-up beyond Bashas Plaza at this time of day, and the congestion always increased as the afternoon progressed.

Figure 2, Looking South on Tegner

For those who have avoided the downtown area and its shops in the past, you can now experience a quiet, pedestrian friendly environment without diesel fumes!

On a more serious note, Figure 2 illustrates the one thing that local merchants have feared the most: that the Bypass will result in permanently lost business revenue. It is likely true that some folks have avoided downtown during the construction phase; but local residents have also limited their visitations to trips of necessity, such as shopping at Bashas Plaza. Frankly, traffic congestion and noise have long made the downtown an unpleasant place to spend discretionary time. Arguably, the Las Vegas-Phoenix traffic is doing what they always did – getting through Wickenburg as quickly as possible. They are just doing it via the Bypass now.

I prefer to think that the new Bypass has restored a pleasant atmosphere to the historic downtown. It is an ambience that no merchant could have achieved alone, and it is something that can attract visitors to linger. If you are a seasonal visitor to Wickenburg, demonstrate your support by visiting the local shops. Take a stroll, enjoy the area. Have a cup of coffee that doesn’t taste like diesel fumes. You will be pleasantly surprised by the change!

Figure 1, New Bridge and lower roundabout. Courtesy Arizona Dept. of Transportation.

The old bridges have been decommissioned for traffic use and the lower roundabout provides access to the traditional routes west on U.S. 60 and north on U.S. 93 and SR 89, as well as the historic downtown area. The upper roundabout is also in use, but it only provides access to Tegner Street (89/93) at present. In other words, the bypass connector between the two roundabouts will not become operational until mid-September.

The approaches to, and exits from, the roundabouts will have two lanes. I say “will” because there have been no paint stripes to identify and separate the lanes during the recent limited use period.

Figure 2, Roundabout detail. Courtesy of Arizona Dept. of Transportation.

Figure 2 shows the intended traffic control details for lane operations. Unfortunately, the absence of paint stripes at the approaches to the roundabout, and within the circle, have allowed drivers to exercise some rather sloppy driving behavior during the past few weeks. Even with an apparent width of two lanes for vehicles to operate in, there is ample evidence that drivers have been failing to keep their cars and tractor-trailer rigs inside the prescribed area.

Figure 3, Absence of lane control in roundabouts.

Figure 3 shows a portion of the south roundabout circle. The brick pavers around the curbing are intended to server as a “shoulder,” much like a typical highway. You can see tire marks on the pavers and curbing, indicating that drivers were not staying inside the designated lanes. It remains to be seen whether this problem will continue when full operation commences, but this should serve as a warning to beware of other traffic (especially large trucks and trailers) when driving through the roundabouts.

By the time our winter visitors return to Wickenburg the new roundabouts and bypass will be “old hat” to local residents and the Phoenix/Las Vegas crowd. Nevertheless, it may be a new experience to you:

• Approach the roundabouts at the posted speed limit.
• Be alert to vehicles in front of you that may have slowed or stopped.
• Vehicles inside the roundabout have the right of way.
• Stay in your lane!

The bypass will eliminate the long lines of traffic at the intersection of Tegner Street and West Wickenburg Way. It will remove the noisy and smelly tractor-trailer rigs from the downtown area, and generally improve pedestrian safety. Moreover, it will allow the Vegas-Phoenix drivers (who view Wickenburg as nothing more than an inconvenient speed bump) to pass through town more quickly.

The calendar is accessible from two places on this site:

• In the navigation sidebar’s Read These First! area, you’ll find a link to the calendar. Click the link to open a new browser page with the calendar inside it. You can use buttons on the calendar to switch between day, week, and month views and move forward or backward through dates. Clicking an item may display additional information about it.
• Farther down in the navigation sidebar’s Upcoming Events area, you’ll find a list of the next five scheduled events. If no date appears for the first event, that means it’s today. If two or more events are scheduled for the same day, the date will only appear for the first event that day. You can also find anotehr link to the interactive calendar at the bottom of this area.

Our Calendar of Events lists only those events we’ve been notified about. This is all the information we have about these events. We do not have any information about any event that is not listed. Do not contact the Webmaster with questions about any event — she cannot help you.

If you want to list your organization’s upcoming events, send details that include the dates, times, event names, locations, and, if available, a Web link to more information. You can use the Contact Us button at the top of any page to get this information to us.

The help of groups and individuals is needed to continue improving our surrounding areas. If you can volunteer for desert clean-up activities, please submit your name, phone number, eMail address and preferred clean-up dates to Lee Pearson at WCF.WCB@GMAIL.COM, call 928-684-7473, or write to Wickenburg Conservation Foundation, Wickenburg Clean & Beautiful, P.O. Box 20008, Wickenburg AZ 85358.

Primary clean-up sites are the Hassayampa River bed from the Hassayampa River Preserve north to Box Canyon and beyond, Blue Tank road, Rincon road, Constellation road including Calamity Wash and South Vulture Mine Road, including the radio tower area. Anyone knowing of other littered sites can identify them with routing and/or GPS coordinates.

Volunteers will be provided with pik sticks, gloves, buckets and/or garbage bags. Dumpsters will be provided. Trailers and/or trucks will be used to remove the garbage bags during and after collection as appropriate. The tradition of providing refreshments for those who participate in the desert clean-up will be continued. Participants have a wonderful opportunity of meeting other conscientious residents who enjoy the beautiful and great outdoors surrounding Wickenburg.

Dates and locations where clean-ups are planned will be published and registered volunteers will be notified.

There are three things that make January especially good:

The days (and often nights) start getting warmer.

This is completely at odds with the way things are where I grew up, in the New York metropolitan area. There, the coldest months were usually January and February and you could pretty much expect at least one bad winter storm either (or both) months. In fact, it’s a 20-inch snowfall one January in northern New Jersey that drove me in search of warmer climates. (I do admit that I got more than I bargained for here.)

I remember my first New Year’s Day in the area. I’d moved to Wickenburg just a few days before, driving cross-country with my husband in my tiny Toyota MR-2. We were waiting for the moving van and decided to head down to Surprise to buy a few things for the apartment I’d be living in until our house sold and my husband could join me. I distinctly remember walking through the K-Mart shopping center parking lot on Grand Avenue — this is going back 11 years now, before all that other shopping sprung up on Grand and Bell Road. I was wearing a t-shirt. No jacket. Just a plain t-shirt. It was New Year’s Day, January 1, and all I could think about was how bundled up I’d be back in New Jersey that day.

I’ve found that the coldest month in Wickenburg is usually December. (This may be at odds with what the weather experts say about Phoenix, but its based on my observations here in Wickenburg over the past 11 years.) It starts warming up right after that. Although the nights in Wickenburg still get down to the 30s sometimes — and can drop even lower — they’re generally warmer than December’s nights, too.

Of course, there are facts and measurements to back this up. Here are some good references:

• National Weather Service Phoenix Normal Temperatures and Precipitation. This lists, by month, normal highs, lows, and average temperatures for Phoenix. Choose a month from the menu near the top of the page. You’ll also see a list of average precipitation by day.
• National Weather Service Phoenix Temperature Records. This also lists, by month, the record highs and lows for Phoenix. Be sure to check out the record high for June 26 if you’re curious why people bail out of Wickenburg in the summer months.
• Phoenix Monthly Temperatures, 1896 to Present. There’s nothing like over 100 years of temperature data to prove a point. This table has it all and I created the chart below to illlustrate the averages as a graph. (The Moose Brigade isn’t the only wickenburg-az.com contributor who has Excel skills.) Remember, these are average temperatures by month, which take into consideration each day’s high and low. (And yes, I do see that December is slightly warmer than January; but I’m sticking to my original statement in support of January being warmer.

Of course, you must remember that these are Phoenix temperatures. Things really are cooler up here in Wickenburg. We’re about 1000-1500 feet higher in elevation, have a lot less concrete and asphalt (at least right now; I can’t speak for the future), and there is some cooling along the riverbed (although I’m sure there was a lot more cooling when the water table was higher and the water ran above ground year-round). As a rule of thumb, I usually subtract 5 to 10 degrees from Phoenix temperatures to get the Wickenburg temperature.

Accurate Wickenburg temperatures can always be found from the National Weather Service page for the weather station at Wickenburg Airport. This station is maintained by NOAA, not the town or the folks at the airport or any organization with a home weather station that might not be set up properly. It’s accurate and reliable. You can also find current observation information right on the National Weather Service Page for Wickenburg, in the Current Conditions box. The box here shows what it looks like as I type this. I expect it to get a lot warmer today — up to 58°F, in fact.

Note that there’s a Local Weather section in the sidebar of this site. Unfortunately, that’s not Wickenburg weather. It’s weather for Glendale, AZ, which is the closest station I could add to this widget. But the link at the bottom of the section, labeled “More Weather Information” will take you to the Wickenburg page on the National Weather Service Web site where you can find more accurate information for the town.

The days get longer.

I think that one of the reasons the days get warmer in January is because they’re also getting longer. The sun here in Arizona is amazingly strong and it really heats up whatever it touches. That’s why the temperature drops like a brick when the sun goes down on a clear day.

Oddly enough, the days are getting longer right now primarily because the sun is setting roughly one minute later every day while rising at about the same time daily. You can see this in the accompanying sunrise/sunset table for Wickenburg for this month. This is calculated by software I have that can give me the exact time of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and moon phase, as well as numerous twilight, azimuth, and altitude data for any point on the globe on any day in history. (The software is called Time Palette and it’s Mac only.If you’re wondering why I have it, it’s because as a pilot, I need some of this information for flying.)

I like longer days. I don’t like waking up in the dark and having it get dark before I’ve had time to finish my chores or have dinner. So longer days are good. And because we’re farther south than most of the country, our days are already longer than most other places in the country. And that’s very good.

A side note here: I was in Alaska on vacation this summer. We were there in early June, at least two weeks before the longest day. Yet it never got dark in Anchorage. Everything stayed open until 10:30 or later; a drive around the city revealed families playing together in parks, riding bikes, and doing lots of outdoor things. The simple formula light equals life certainly applied. I look forward to long days this summer and hope never to be that far north in the winter time.

If you’re interested in sunrise and sunset times for Wickenburg, we’ve got you covered. You can find this information in the sunrise/sunset calendar of the sidebar. It’s updated throughout the day so it only includes upcoming information. You can also view it for the entire year online at http://ical.mac.com/mlanger/Sun or, if you have a calendar program that supports subscriptions to iCalendars (such as Mac OS’s iCal), you can subscribe to it at webcal://ical.mac.com/mlanger/Sun.ics. Remember, this is information calculated specifically for Wickenburg, based on the GPS coordinates for Wickenburg Airport.

Sometimes there’s rain.

The third thing that’s good about January is that it sometimes rains. In fact, it did this past weekend.

Folks from wet places or even normal places probably aren’t too happy when it rains. But real desert dwellers are thrilled. Not only does the rain give us the water we so desperately need here in the desert, but it washes the dust off everything so it looks and smells clean and fresh. The rain we just experienced was a good soaking rain, the kind that really gets into the soil.

I expect the desert to look a lot greener in the coming weeks. The ranchers will like that, too. Plenty of grass for their cattle.

And, if we get more rain in the coming weeks, we might just get treated to one of those super-special springs, like the one in 1997 or 1998 — I can’t remember which. We’d just moved into our house and the El Nino winter had revealed all the leaks around the window frames. (Not a huge deal, as the house was new and still under warranty.) The desert was unbelievably green throughout January, February, and March. Then the flowers started opening, all over the desert. The quantity and variety was amazing. The Phoenix news was running stories about how certain types of plants that hadn’t bloomed in years were blooming. It was beautiful and it lured me into thinking that every spring would be so special. Unfortunately, you don’t get many flowers without rain. The last two springs have been especially disappointing.

You can get precipitation information for the Phoenix area from the National Weather Service links I listed above. The Wickenburg Weather page shows history information, so you can see how much rain has fallen within the past 3 or so days. If you want more details for the Phoenix area, the Phoenix Monthly Precipitation page has it, by month, from 1896 to the most recent ended month. I used that data to create this chart.

As the chart shows, January isn’t the only rainy month. It’s just one of the months that it’s more likely to rain than other months, which tend to be very dry.

What Do You Like about January in Wickenburg?

This is what I like about January in Wickenburg. What do you think? Use the Comments link or form for this article to let us know or to share links to your favorite weather resources.