Monsoon Before-and-After: Documenting Washes and Roads on Land You Don't Live On

A lot of vacant land in Cochise County is owned by people who do not live here. The parcel was bought on a trip, or inherited, or is being held for a house that has not been built yet. The owner is in Phoenix, California or further, and sees the land once a year if that.

The monsoon happens without them. The National Weather Service runs the Arizona monsoon season from June 15 to September 30, and in those three and a half months the storms that cross the valley can rearrange a parcel more than the rest of the year combined. Most absentee owners find out what changed second-hand, from a neighbor or a real estate agent, or when they drive in and the road is not there.

This article is about a simple fix: a dated set of aerial photos from the same positions before and after the season. It is not complicated, and it is not an engineering study. It is a record of what you can see.

What a monsoon season can do to unattended land

None of these happen on every parcel every year, but all of them are common enough on valley-floor land to plan for:

• Washes move. Banks cut back, channels widen or deepen, and on flatter ground a wash can braid and pick a new path. Last year's crossing may not be where the water goes this year.
• Access roads get cut. A graded dirt road usually fails where it crosses a wash: a dip that becomes a ditch, a culvert that plugs and is bypassed, a shoulder that slumps. Ruts form where water ran down the road itself.
• Fences move or go. Fence lines that cross washes collect brush and debris until a post lets go. Wire ends up downstream, wrapped around mesquite.
• Debris and sediment arrive. Debris lines, sand fans below crossings, and trash carried in from upstream.
• Grass comes up. A good monsoon also grows grass, which can hide ruts and new channels from the ground.

Roads are the one that most often costs money, and they raise a question absentee owners do not always know the answer to: who fixes it. Cochise County's comprehensive plan FAQ is direct. Privately owned roads are the responsibility of the property owner or the private entity that owns them. Some roads are public but not county-maintained, and for those "no entity is formally responsible" until the Board of Supervisors accepts them or an improvement district takes them on. If the road to your parcel is one of those, the person who fixes it may be you, a neighbor, or nobody.

Why the same viewpoints matter

A set of aerial photos taken in May and another set taken in October from different spots is two sets of nice pictures. They do not answer the question. A wash looks wider or narrower depending on angle and height, and a road crossing photographed from the east tells you little about one photographed from the north.

The useful record is the same frame twice. Each photo carries its position in the file. We keep a list of the position, height and heading of every frame from the spring flight and fly back to those positions in October. Side by side, the pairs answer "what changed" without anyone having to interpret anything. Where a bank cut back, the pair shows it. Where nothing changed, the pair shows that too, which is often the more useful answer.

The dates matter as much as the positions. A photo with a date and location attached is a record. A photo on a phone with no context is a memory.

What to photograph

The list depends on the parcel, but on most vacant land in the valley it looks like this:

• An overview from fixed points, typically two or more corners, high enough to show the whole parcel with its neighbors.
• The access route from the nearest public road, in sequence: turn-offs, gates, cattle guards, culverts, and every wash crossing.
• Each wash on the parcel, where it enters, where it leaves, and anywhere it comes near a road, fence or building site.
• Fence lines, especially where they cross drainage.
• Improvements: a well, tank, pad, shed, container or anything else you would not want to lose track of.
• Low spots where water stands after a storm, and the planned building site if there is one.

If you have not seen your land from the air at all, what a drone flyover shows before you drive out covers the first look. The before-and-after record builds on that.

When to fly

Before: late spring, roughly April to early June. The grass is low, the ground is dry, and the season has not started. That is the cleanest baseline the year offers.

After: October, once the season has closed. Debris lines, scour and fresh sediment are easiest to read in the weeks after September 30, before wind, cattle and winter rain blur them. Our article on reading an elevation model for monsoon drainage explains why October is the month for that evidence. That article covers the mapping side, where water flows and pools across the ground; this one is the photographic record.

Two flights a year is enough for most owners. Flying after every storm is rarely worth the cost on land nobody is using.

What to do with the record

• Decide on road repair before a sale. The Arizona Department of Real Estate's buyer's checklist tells land buyers to look at permanent legal access and at the flooding and drainage disclosure in the public report. A buyer who drives in on a cut road will ask. Knowing in October what the crossing looks like lets you decide whether to fix it, price it in, or disclose it, before an agent or buyer finds it for you.
• Show a contractor. A grader or fencing contractor can look at the pairs and quote, or at least tell you whether a site visit is needed, without you paying for a trip to find out.
• Show a buyer. A dated before-and-after of the access road and crossings is a plain way to show how the land behaved in a wet season.
• Keep it for your own records. A few years of pairs show whether a wash is stable or moving toward something you care about.

One caution on repairs. Cochise County's Flood Control District says a Floodplain Use Permit may be needed before you grade, fill, install walls or fencing, or make other changes in a floodplain, even where no building permit is required, and that agricultural properties are not exempt. Before regrading a crossing or rebuilding a fence across a wash, check with the county.

On insurance: keep your own records, and ask your insurer what it needs. We do not suggest these photos will satisfy any particular insurer or claim, and you should not assume they will.

What this record is not

And if you do drive out after a storm, do not cross a running wash. The National Weather Service notes that 12 inches of rushing water can carry away most cars. The road you are trying to inspect is a poor place to find that out.

What it costs

There is no separate before-and-after product on our rate card. Each visit is priced on the land tiers by flight legs, from $375 for a parcel up to 40 acres covered from one launch point, and access route documentation, the drive in from the nearest public road shot in sequence, is a $150 add-on. There is no travel charge inside the Sulphur Springs Valley. The full numbers are on the pricing page, and the real estate and land service page describes the deliverables.

You do not need to be here for either flight. Send the parcel number, the access route as you know it, and anything you already know is a problem through the contact page, and we will tell you which frames we would take and what the two visits would cost.