Ode to our big, mean, dangerous Arizona monsoon

We’re remembering Clay Thompson with some of our favorite columns. This one ran June 20, 2001:

When I first came here to toil in the vineyards of the Phoenix Gazette, I frequently left the office in the late afternoon or evening in the company of the city editor, the immortal Lois Boyles.

Often, in the summer, we would go outside to find the evening sky was a sort of sickly pinkish-green, and the air was filled with dirt and grit scoured off the ground by a hot, dry wind. Sometimes, a few drops of rain would fall and trigger that hot-asphalt smell.

“Oh, boy,” Lois would say with the delight. “We’re having a dust storm. Isn’t this great?”

I thought she was hopelessly insane. Things change.

Maybe if a storm has dropped a tree on your house, you’ll feel differently, but as for me, I have come to kind of like, even enjoy, the monsoon.

I like those clouds that pile up as the day progresses, pushed into huge towers by the hot air coming up off the desert. I like the spectacular lightning. I like the winds. I’m still not all that crazy about dust storms, but I like the unpredictability of it all.

Is it going to be a dust storm or a gully-washer? Is it going to pour over a few blocks and leave the rest of the city dry, or is it going to rain everywhere? Will the streets flood? Will the lights just flicker and come right back or is the power off for the night? Is it ever going to end?

Let’s face it: We don’t get that much weather here. Maybe the occasional record high for the day. Maybe a sharp cold (for us) snap around Christmas. Every now and then some wavering from the norm.

Except for the monsoon: It’s show time. It’s muggy, it’s unpredictable, it’s big and mean and dangerous, and it seems to go on forever. By late September, early October, it has made everyone crabby.

But it’s different, and it’s interesting. And it’s Arizonan. It may be rotten weather, but it’s our rotten weather.