Must be a Monsoon - Is the rain back for good?

1983. About Half mile from my house. The large outcropping to the right is where the "storm surge" goes. Generally it's a peaceful wash and the tiny strip to the left carries a little water down stream.

1983. The same river, about ten miles in town. The photo was taken from a bride. That river you see is probably twenty feet deep or more. Any more there is six to twelve inches of water in it that span 1/3 the width of the wash. Unless it rains.

Fourth Avenue is a bustling "urban" culture center. They have a lot of good food as well. It's packed at night, people partying and drinking. This is mid town.

Growing up in Tucson, AZ is too easy. The weather is arguably the best (driest) in the country. Sure you can find more stable temperatures on the coast, but think about the humidity, the hurricanes, and gloominess. Tucsonans have it made, although it can get very hot and quite cold. It stays well over one hundred degrees for about three months, and can dip into the teens on rare occasions in the bitter cold winter mornings (If a storm rolls in it stays right around seventy or eighty in the summer and 50-60 in the winter, but the humidity jumps)

Out of the twelve months in the year, however, we get at least eight or nine months of sun shine, a couple months of overcast, and a month or so of rain, the last twenty years or so that is. You see, although I am to young to have lived these memories, my parents tell me of a day when a monsoon was a monsoon. When the rains came in, which tended to be every night for a month, right about this time of year, and you didn't get to leave your house. You weren't going to drive through it on the roads, in many cases you had to leave the roads. It was just to dangerous.

You see, when it rains in the desert,. it doesn't roll in Sunday, and stick around till Wednesday, soaking the place. The storm rolls in, generally from the South, South-East, after building all day. 40,000 foot tall clouds, move in on the city, like UFO's hovering in over the 10,000 foot tall Rincon mountains. Lightning and thunder fill the black sky, streaking for the ground. It's the afternoon, and it must be a monsoon.

At three o'clock you watch it build, and five o'clock it's over part of the city, and by six o'clock the storm is gone and dumped sometimes two to three inches of rain. It doesn't sound like much, but imagine this, everyday for a month. The ground is saturated, and water runs, south to north, right through the city. The winds reach seventy miles an hour and power poles snap. 1983 was the last big one.

If you ever make a trip out to the desert, about this time a year, and you see a menacing dark sky ahead of you on the road, just remember. Proceed with caution. These storms dump a lot of rain, very quickly, and there are often deaths related to people trying to cross washes full of water, raging across the road. Or, worse yet, someone stuck in a wash because of traffic, or simply crossing a wash driving, and a wall of water sweeps them away. Generally however, before the wall of water, there is a stream to let you know it's wet. Oh yea, and the black skies roaring to life.

Tucson has grown tremendously in the twenty years. More so than in any twenty year period preceding it. If the rains return in the summer, a lot of people are going to be in trouble, as housing demand, costs associated, and the money being made has allowed housing developers to build right up to the banks of the largest wash/rivers in the city. A place no one would have gotten a permit to build just five years ago.

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