It's 85 degrees at 3:30 in the afternoon. June 10th. Less than a month until the monsoon is scheduled to start.
Oh yes we do! (I heard those dubious snickers about a monsoon in Arizona.)
It's a regular season here, usually starting around the 4th of July and running until September. If you were to check the description of a monsoon, you'd learn that it is a change in the direction of the wind. Where normally our "breezes" (heh-heh) come in from the West Coast, during the monsoon season they blow up from the southeast. Dust storms down in Southern Arizona first, sometimes bringing rain. Up here the mountain tops apparently dig into those clouds, releasing more rain. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to cool down the late afternoons and evenings. After a few weeks of dry, sunny heat-filled days, the cooling monsoon rain is a relief.
I remember my first day in Phoenix, back in July of 1972. I was in a little store when raindrops began coming down outside and everyone rushed outside to get wet. I thought they were crazy but then I learned that it hadn't rained for something over 100 days. I got used to it and became a little crazy myself, in time.
