Monsoon

It's getting monsoonal up in here.

The monsoons bring rain to Tucson every year.

Every summer it gets so hot. Hotter and hotter until you just can't stand it anymore. Tucsonans can handle it. We're part sun. But May bring the first bouts of high temperatures. Then June comes and puts us over 100.

Then July...oh, July. That's what finally breaks us. It's too hot to leave the house. It's too hot to swim! It's lazy hot. It's the hot that makes you want to take three naps during the day and go to bed early. It's the kind of hot that preheats water coming out of the faucet.

And just when you think it can't get any hotter. Just when you are seriously considering becoming a citizen of Alaska. Just when you've suffered your last day of stifling, egg fryin' on a sidewalk temperatures.

It rains.

First it threatens for a few weeks. We see dark and ominous clouds promising showers. They hover, but never really produce. They whine, but never really cry. But they're there. Those clouds remind us that something is coming to wash away the heat. You can always trust those clouds and that they will release one day.

And then it happens. The sky turns black and a monsoonal, hurricane, flood emerges from the sky. It's really quite a show. We watch the streets from our windows and observe rain falling horizontally and large trees falling over as if they never had roots and rivers forming in the streets.

This rain that everyone waits for comes and riles everyone up. It washes away the heat and steam and sometimes leaves a little chaos behind. But it always leaves a sort of peace that we can trust that there will be rain, there will be chaos, and sometimes downright destruction. With that comes peace and a cleansing of sorts. New life pops up and people excitedly come out of hiding to enjoy the rainy smells and the cooler temperatures the rain brings.

The clouds are ominous, they're foreboding, and it's almost time. The rains will come soon. Can't wait.