Tucson Rainfest 2014

This post is coming a bit late, I know. I deals with weather in Tucson that's been going on for a couple of months now, and I wrote most of it in mid-July. Now it's September, and I'm only just now getting around to posting on this blog again after months of writing list articles for a movie website called Taste of Cinema. I just submitted my last article there, so now I'm back.

I was anxious about living through a southwestern summer the first full year that we were in Tucson. People were full of dire warnings about the incredible heat, how unbearable it was, how you had to spend most of your time indoors with the A/C on just to survive the three hottest months of the year.

Then summer came (we moved here in the late summer/early fall of 2006, so we caught the cooler end of the season, and had to wait until 2007 to get hit full in the face by the sun's unforgiving rays). It was hot, for sure, as if a giant hair dryer had been turned on a few inches from our skin. The wind blew warm and arid like the blast of an oven after you open the door. But it wasn't unbearable. I knew, as I do now, that you can't spend an indefinite amount of time outdoors in the summer; it's important to limit your exposure to short bursts, drink a lot of water, have sunscreen on hand to protect delicate skin from severe burns (which are less likely once you've developed a decent base tan, though skin cancer's always in the back of your mind).

It's analogous to severe winters in other parts of the country. It changes your routine, forces you to take the weather into consideration whenever you plan an outing, makes you aware of the inherent vulnerability of the human body when faced with natural phenomena. Yet you learn to put up with it, and over time, you kind of stop noticing it. It's hot, that's the way it is, get over it. If you don't like it, move.

That's what I would say to people if I were insufferably rude. I'm not, so I keep my mouth shut when I hear people complain about the heat. The other day at my job, I heard a customer say she always hates it when it's this hot, and has done so since 1973. That would be the year after I was born, and I'm in my early forties now. So, in all that time, she has gone on living in southern Arizona, roasting in the desert's sultry bosom and loathing every minute of it, and hasn't made a successful effort to leave. It's possible she's just one of those people who likes to gripe about anything and everything with little intention of doing much about it. It's possible she's too poor to move. Maybe she just likes the winters so much (so mild here that it they would be called spring anywhere else) that she can't bring herself to leave.

Whatever the reason, she's hardly alone among Tusconans when it comes to hating the heat. But you see, here's the thing: we don't own a car, and for me to get to work I have to ride a bike close to half an hour each way. I do this because I hate the bus; anyone who's ridden a city bus in Tucson more than a couple of times knows why this is. What that means for me, though, is a morning ride that hovers somewhere in the high eighties, and an afternoon ride home that is generally over one-hundred degrees. As a result, whenever I hear someone who's just gotten out of their air-conditioned car after coming from their air-conditioned house say, “Whew, it's hot out there! I can barely stand it!” I think, Yeah, cry me a river. Try spending as much time in the sun as I do, while riding a bicycle.

But you know what? This Washington State born-and-bred man, accustomed to the chilly, wet climate of the Pacific Northwest, doesn't mind it a bit. I got sick of being rained on most of the year by the time I was fourteen, but didn't get away from it until I was in my early thirties. Now I'm in The Land Where It Hardly Ever Rains, and I dig it. Sure, I miss the noticeable demarcation of seasons, and the absence of any large bodies of water nearby, but I don't miss being cold. I'd much rather be hot, it doesn't cause your body to seize up and shiver like a chihuahua in a meat locker. The heat and the intermittent monsoon rains are what make the Sonoran Desert what it is, as beautiful a landscape as any I've ever seen. Cicadas buzz like tiny chainsaws, lizards scurry along the ground in search of bugs and shade, students at the U of A go away and don't come back until September. The huge palo verde beetles have returned, dragging their heavy three-inch bodies around in their hunt for mates, creepy to look at but absolutely harmless.

I'm glad the rains have come back this year. We were gone last summer, and apparently it was one of the driest seasons on recent record. Temperatures soared as high as one-hundred and twenty degrees. Most of the southwest has been experiencing a prolonged drought, with the rain coming less frequently than in the not-too-distant past. This year, it rained on the Fourth of July, as well as the days before and after. That may not mean a permanent return to reliable precipitation, but it's a sign the monsoons haven't left for good just yet. When they come, bringing thick black cloud banks like rolling columns of night and hitting the city with a heavy sustained barrage, the streets run like streams and the air afterward grows as muggy and close as a wet wool shirt. I love it, it's an unmistakable sign of seasonal change that doesn't happen too often in the desert. Bring it on, bring the sun and shimmering heat and the Sonoran creatures clicking and skittering in the dust. I wouldn't want to live here without it.

A slight update: the rains have continued well into September, as dramatic and beautiful as any storms have a right to be. Thunder cracks across a sky momentarily fissured by the glow of lightning, clouds loom as dark and heavy as deranged gods, and more than once I've been caught in downpours that have left me soaked and spattered in wet sand. I try not to think about what flows in the temporary rivers in the streets—the dead pigeons and hobo pee, discarded condoms, used hypodermics. Better to appreciate the change in the scenery. We had a day about a week ago when the rain continued from morning until late afternoon, creating a lot of flooding around town. One woman died while trying to drive through a wash. You shouldn't do that, by the way. It rains so little here that people have no idea what to do—they drive as fast as they would on a dry road, wrecking their cars and making traffic in Tucson even more dangerous than it already is. I come from a rainy state, so I'm biased in terms of driving safety.

I once spoke to a woman in her sixties who said you used to be able to set your watch to when the monsoons would come. “It would rain from three in the afternoon until five, every day for a month.” She said you could rely on it, and that pattern didn't change for years. Now, it rains when it feels like it, sometimes hard, sometimes not at all, and you can't predict the time of day. Maybe it's climate change, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's a combination of the two (the maybe that gets my vote). I'm just happy I'm getting to experience the one other season that comes to southern Arizona.