High desert?
Everywhere. It’s really coming in.
We are in the foothills north of Los Angeles/ Sierra Madre, near Pasadena. Forest starts about 1/2 miles from here. The canyons are steep, the mountains rise sharply. With chaparral burned off, the soil cannot hold the water.
We do not get soft rain as they get out east, but rather thunderstorms/ torrential downpours that don’t last too long, etc. When it rains it pours. I have been on our main road coming up the hill from the freeway — ie, civilization is not far from here — where I thought my car would be washed off the road. We had mudslides down the canyon close to here last winter.
It’s the West, you know? Wild and wooly.