The monsoon started!

Tucson's summer monsoon has arrived right on schedule. Actually, a day early. 

The "official" monsoon season here is June 15-Sept. 30, but this year the clouds and rain rolled in on June 14. Often, since I moved here six years ago, the rain hasn't started until July.

It makes for some really dramatic sunsets. I took all of these photos this week from my front courtyard. The light is incredible!

We need a spell of very hot days to get it started. I'm talking 100+ degrees. Then, shifting winds and high atmospheric pressure bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, swirling up from the southeast instead of the routine weather that comes from the west.

It pelts the desert with hail, roars with thunder and crackles with lightening. What the desert can't soak up turns dry washes and some streets into raging rivers, bringing both relief and flooding and in the last few years tornadoes. It's the favorite time of year for a lot of desert dwellers, and you see kids dancing around in the rain and adults sitting on patios watching the show. I've had so much hail in my yard that it looks like snow and my back yard has looked like a lake.

The first day of this year's monsoon its winds tore down a corner of my shade sail. When I got up the next morning it had torn down two more, so I took the whole thing down for the season. It's too hot to eat at that table anyway in the summer.

Average monsoon rainfall is about six inches, and a good pounding brings the temperature down by about 20 degrees. In the old days, it would rain every afternoon like clockwork with a quick hard downburst, but now it's much more erratic. And the few tornadoes we've had since I moved here were unheard of in the past. Climate change. 

Have a colorful day