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.
