Storms and Rain in the Desert

One of my early memories of rain in the desert goes back to when I lived in Tucson. At that time, Tucson was a relatively small town and the desert was easily accessible. Tucson is slightly higher above sea level than Phoenix and has a little more rain. One day we drove out into the desert on a dirt road that went up and down over the hills like a roller coaster. At the top of one of the hills there were a couple of cars stopped and people out looking down into the wash. We stopped and looking up the wash, saw a flash flood coming. There was an actual wall of water about two feet high pushing along small debris. It washed out over the road and turned to mud. I have always heard about flash floods but that is the only one I have ever seen actually start and come down a dry wash.

We used to have a summer monsoon, but then the weather people all got together and decided that the annual increase in moist air really wasn't a monsoon and anyway, we now have a summer thunderstorm season. The monsoon was defined by two consecutive days with the dew point above 55 degrees. They used to have lotteries about guessing the start date. I guess the weather service doesn't like gambling so they changed the start date to a date certain. Beginning last year, the Summer Thunderstorm Season starts officially on June 15, which is easy for me to remember because it is both my birthday and my wedding anniversary.

Last summer the thunderstorms decided to celebrate the new opening of the season. We had one storm that was so incredible. It started to lightning and suddenly, the whole sky lit up with lightning continuously for about 45 minutes without stopping. The thunder was so loud and continuous we thought the sky would fall in. Of course it didn't or I wouldn't be writing this blog. We stood outside until the lightning was so close, we got afraid and moved inside.

We also have these huge dust storms. Mostly the people who promote Arizona for tourism try to ignore the dust storms, thunderstorms, hail, rain and snow in the state. They would like you to believe that the weather is always perfect. It isn't. Sometimes it is unbearable. The dust comes in huge storms called haboobs. You can see the edge of the dust coming across the city and suddenly the whole world is blown away with huge clouds of dust. It is pretty spectacular but really messy.

I will probably write about the weather and such again some time.