Monsoon?

Before I moved to Arizona I always thought that a "monsoon" Was a tropical storm in southeast Asia. Here in Arizona they have something called the monsoon, the season starts mid-June"ish" and usually goes well into August. The University of Arizona Website can explain it better than I can. It has to do with temperature fluctuations , humidity and winds. All I can say is that it can get pretty awesome, with dust storms, thunder and lightning.

Last evening we were visiting friend on the south side of town, they live as far south as you can go before you get to the Gila Indian Reservation. On our way home We saw this

Here is the wind kicking up the dust from the reservation side of the road.

This is looking the down the road to our left. The storm is just rolling in, you can't see the blue sky that is right of what I took a picture of.

Soon we were driving in this. Rain. My kids live for rainy days, like some kids live the first snowfall of the winter. It doesn't rain here much. We splash in puddles whenever we can. To avoid the heavy downpour we turned the car north and were soon driving in a light sprinkle and saw this:

and this

The storms here tend to be pretty localized. Where it might be raining over my house, less than a block away it can be bone dry. There was no rain at our house but we when we looked towards the South the dark cloud and lightning display was impressive. This storm pales in comparison to most of our "monsoon" storms. but it was the first of the season for me. I know storms can be dangerous but these storms have a certain beauty to them that I love.

Happy fourth of July!