I moved here in July 2003 (it was 115 degrees that day - yikes!) and I remember in those first few weeks of watching my new local news station that I would keep hearing about "monsoons." I recall thinking that it was weird that I'd never heard about monsoons in Arizona only in India. It sounded so exotic to live somewhere that had monsoons and not the usual hurricanes and tornadoes. Well, 5 years later (ugh, 5 years?) I now know better than to take the media at face value. They always jazz stuff up, don't they? They give snazzy titles and create catchy phrases for just about anything to make it newsworthy. Monsoons are just thunderstorms with a lot of wind and therefore dust too. When they pop up during the summer monsoon season they are the talk of the news with the live reports and interrupting of So You Think You Can Dance and other equally annoying tidbits that let you know "Hey, it's raining in the desert!" While watching these storms from the comfort of your hand-me-down futon can be lovely and a sweet source of entertainment, working through them is another thing entirely. Poor Keck has to put on a moldy rainsuit (think Gordon's Fisherman) because he can't find the totally awesome rainsuit I got him a few seasons back, and gently toss bags around. I'm spared the physical labor and banana rainsuit but have to deal with weather related diversions and the aftermath they leave in their path. I wonder what it must be like in India where they actually have real monsoons. Anyway, I wish the Bombay wanna-be nights wouldn't align so well with my schedule so I might enjoy the lightning show from my living room window rather than my work station.
In the interest of full disclosure, while wonderful shows like the one above (another google images rip-off, by the way) might make monsoons sound really amazing, they usually actually look like this instead:
Ahhhh, that's more like it - a blinding duststorm as you try to make your way around the overdeveloped concrete jungle sprinkled with manicured golf courses and perfectly landscaped palm trees that is the valley metro area.
